Like Tree8Likes

HK's tiny apartment trend

Closed Thread
Page 2 of 2 FirstFirst 1 2
  1. #11

    Join Date
    Sep 2014
    Posts
    3,921
    What 165 square-foot flats tell us about Occupy protests

    http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1634303/what-165-sq-ft-flats-tell-us-about-occupy-protests

    A lot of people have been struck by the tenacity of the Occupy protesters, wondering how and why they could keep up their occupation of Hong Kong's highways for over a month without showing any signs of giving up.

    I may have stumbled on part of the reason. Last week, a report said that one of our major property developers had issued a price list for a newly completed project in Cheung Sha Wan. Some flats are as small as 193 sq ft, the largest just over 500 sq ft. Moreover, these were not the smallest apartments to go on sale recently. Another of our major developers is offering flats of 165 sq ft.
    Rub your eyes and look at those numbers again, then pinch yourself and look a third time. That was what I did.

    A sales manager is quoted as saying the studio flats are "very suitable for first-time buyers". Surely he meant to say "very small people".

    One has to ask what kind of social system we have created where flats this small are considered part of the solution to Hong Kong's housing problems. In any other developed community, they would be considered part of the problem. What kind of economy and property market have we created that only flats of this size are affordable to a significant number of would-be homebuyers? And what kind of political system have we built to sustain such an appalling situation?
    Then you go back to a news story from last month which shows the chairmen of these two property developers among a group of business leaders being feted in the Great Hall of the People, by President Xi Jinping no less.

    Now you begin to see the big picture. You join up the dots - as those clever students have surely done - and realise why the protesters are so angry about the developments on the political reform front. They are calling for the end of corporate voting because they realise such a practice puts literally hundreds of votes in the pockets of those same property developers who are offering miniscule flats. They are calling for the scrapping of functional constituencies because they realise their existence entrenches the advantages of the "haves" at the expense of the "have-nots".
    Last edited by Cho-man; 12-11-2014 at 01:29 PM.