Living in a metal cage homes

Hong Kong is China’s richest city and boasts more Louis Vuitton boutiques than Paris, yet, there are tens of thousands of residents living what I can only describe as hellholes. They are cramped into living conditions that you wouldn’t let a stray dog sleep in. These ‘cages’ measure 180 by 60 centimeters. This sadly is the reality of the world that is rich and poor.

More and more of the city’s blue collar workers live in structures like these, which are “essentially bunkbeds that are sealed off with cage wire so that people can lock them when they aren’t there.

They are the size of a single bed and are about 4 feet tall for each ‘unit’.” Bathrooms are shared with everyone else, and in the buildings itself, which are old tenement flats, live around 1,000 people.

Raising land value has resulted in increasing scarcity of space, which forces specifically the lower classes to come up with rigorous ideas like these.
Renting one cage home in Hong Kong costs about $167 (!) a month. The highest bunks are the cheapest. This example shows us the dark side of globalization. Globalization has winners – the flexible knowledge worker, the creative class -, and losers. Many losers.