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According to estimates by the Association of Community Organizations, approximately 200,000 Hong Kong residents live in dilapidated, cramped, and poorly equipped housing.
The "cage houses" were noisy, and the poorest people in the city lived there.
Old or young, male or female, they all resigned themselves to living in cramped spaces where they couldn't even stand up straight.
Glamorous Hong Kong hides within itself around 200,000 people living in such abject poverty.
These photos were taken for SoCO, a non-governmental organization that advocates for policy changes and improved living standards in cities.
Residents are forced to be creative within their cramped living space.
Ah Tin lived on a single bed. It was surrounded by mesh walls, perfectly sized to fit his body.
His grief had made him lose all appetite, even for food to survive.
Mr. Leung is one of the residents living in the "cage"—his hobby is reading. He reads a lot and has done many jobs to survive.
However, he was now too old to find work, and so he had to resort to reading to escape the painful reality of poverty surrounding him.
I'm still alive here, but surrounded by four "coffin" walls - one of the tenants in the cage house sobbed.
These impoverished people have no choice.
Wanting to change isn't easy...
Sometimes we wake up to a harsh reality.
Over the past 10 years, greenhouses made of wire mesh have decreased, and the partitions have been replaced with wood.
Living here, privacy, or even a good night's sleep, suddenly becomes a luxury.
At over 60 years old, Mr. Wong still lives here. To pay for his rent, he works on construction sites every day.
In his free time, he volunteers to help the homeless.
Accommodations like these are actually illegal in Hong Kong.
The members of the Li Chong family—father and son—are Japanese.
They were both very tall, and they found it difficult to move around.
A multi-functional space for the Leung family: Sleeping, eating, and cooking.
Organizations like the SoCO Association of Community Organizations are helping to improve these appalling living conditions.
“That day, I went home and burst into tears,” photographer Benny Lam shared with National Geographic after experiencing and documenting the living conditions in those places through his photo series “Trapped.” Lam’s photo series aims to show the world the suffocating lives of nearly 200,000 Hong Kong residents (including 40,000 children) forced to live in these “coffin-like” boxes.
This is the result of four years of practical experience in more than 100 "coffin-like" rooms, each measuring less than 5 square meters. "It was horrible, I felt terrible, life was so abnormal. I was almost paralyzed," Lam recalled.
With a population of nearly 7.5 million and virtually no land for development, Hong Kong's housing market has risen to the highest prices in the world. Tens of thousands of people have no choice but to live in tiny apartments, divided into compartments of just a few square meters (including kitchen, toilet, and shower). They truly resemble coffins or rectangular cages. Cooking, sleeping, and hygiene all take place within this minuscule space, photographer Lam shared. To create these coffin apartments, houses are subdivided to accommodate at least 20 bunk beds. Rent is around $250 per month.
Kitchen and toilet inside the greenhouse.
In her series of photographs titled "Trapped," Lam aims to bring light to the cramped, suffocating homes, places where the glamorous, luxurious lights of Hong Kong's prosperity do not reach. Through these images, Lam hopes that those forced to live in these coffin apartments will be noticed and that the unfair gap between their circumstances will be closed.
"You might wonder why we should care, they have nothing to do with our lives," Lam wrote on her Facebook page. "Not really. They are people who exist in your life every day: they are the people who serve you in restaurants, they are the security guards in the shopping malls you're strolling through, or the cleaners and delivery people on the streets you walk through. The only difference between us and them is [their homes]. This is a humanitarian issue."
How can I avoid living in places like this anymore?
Lam found a particularly striking image during her field trip. It showed a man lying on his bed, with no room to stretch his legs, his knees almost touching the windowless walls of the coffin-shaped box. He was eating baked beans from a box, presumably his dinner, and watching television. His laundry was drying inside. For Lam, it was the most profound example of how many citizens lack rights and how the government should act to address the housing crisis and income inequality in Hong Kong.
How did those luxurious lights manage to shine down on this place?
(Text: Sarah Stacke/Photo: Benny Lam)
The courage of the men, women, and families who were so open and willing to share their stories with a stranger, even though Lam herself often felt awkward, was remarkable. Many were ashamed to live in such cramped spaces, but they were powerless to change their lives and could only hope that one day, things would change.
Lam Tue (According to NatGeo)
