Tin houses at the rooftop of an industrial building at Hing Yip Street. All Photos: Guo Jiaxue / China Daily

Social worker Sze Lai-shan (right) is collecting information of an industrial building occupant.

There are many vacant flats in industrial buildings in Kwun Tong.

There are still many hardware engineering factories in the industrial buildings at Tai Kok Tsui.

They do not appear on government census statistics, because they live in illegal flats in abandoned industrial buildings, saying even the infamous cage homes are too expensive for them. Guo Jiaxue reports.

As the Traditional Mid-Autumn Festival, a holiday for family get-together, approaches, Sze Lai-shan, a social worker with the Society for Community Organizations, is planning to distribute free mooncakes to some of Hong Kong's most grassroots citizens.

At 8:15 on Tuesday night, she arrived at Kwun Tong, with a team of volunteers. Lights were already on. Traffic was still heavy. The APM shopping mall, an area landmark, was alive with bright lights and the din of human voices. Kwun Tong is the largest industrial district in East Kowloon. At the harbor side are many old industrial buildings.

Just five minutes' walk from the MTR station, Sze and her team stopped at an old 14-storey factory building on Hing Yip Street. The signs suggest the building is occupied now by restaurants, a kungfu association, a shower door factory, and a plastics factory. Walking through a parking lot on the ground floor, the team rode the lift to the top floor. It's quiet inside the building, at night. The hallway was empty. All the doors were closed. The group made its way to the back stairs, and climbed up to the roof top.

The roof top was like a scene from another world. Along all four sides were dozens of tin houses, standing closely together. It was dark with only dim light emerging from the small windows of the houses. The rooftop, offered a rare perspective of Kwun Tong at night. In the far distance stood a wall of light from the city's skyline. The skyscrapers served as a backdrop to the dimly figures moving around slowly.

These are invisible people, that is, they are not counted in government statistics. They live in an industrial building, which is illegal.

The increasing numbers of residents living in industrial buildings caught Sze's notice at the end of 2010. The waiting list for public housing is growing fast. In 2006 it was less than 100,000. By September of 2011, it was 165,000 according to government statistics. Statistics also show that the number of persons residing in inadequate housing, including private temporary housing or cubicles, bed spaces, cocklofts in private permanent housing declined from 94,000 in 2007 to 66,000 in 2011.

"So, where have they gone? Where do they live?" Sze wondered.

She started looking in industrial buildings. Through referrals or simply by knocking on doors, she started to find some of those who had disappeared from view.

Sze estimates they number more than 10,000. A large number are single middle-aged men, who usually have to wait as long as 10 years to be granted public housing.

"The places (in industrial buildings) are a lot cheaper. And they don't have to pay two months' rent as deposit," Sze said.

Industrial buildings have long been a headache for the government. As a result of Hong Kong's economic restructuring, and the relocation of manufacturing to the mainland in the 1980s, many industrial buildings are left vacant or under-utilized.

The total floor area of Hong Kong's factories was about 17.2 million square meters at the end of 2011. With a vacancy rate of 6 percent, the unused area was over 1 million sq m, according to the Development Bureau.

That is a waste of Hong Kong's precious land resources. Most industrial buildings are relatively new and located in convenient urban areas. Some even enjoy attractive harbour views.

For more than a decade the government wanted to "revitalize" these buildings, by broadening the permissible policies, transforming them into schools, hotels or private clubs. But the authorities stood firm against converting the buildings to residences. Conversion of factories to residential units presents a fire hazard, and is prohibited under the Buildings Ordinance.

The revitalization has proven to be very slow. Between 2001 and 2009, only 37 factory modifications were completed. Only three of those were wholesale conversions. Non-compliant uses of the factory buildings, however, is widespread. Many buildings in Kwun Tong, Tai Kok Tsui, and Tsuen Wan have already become homes of those who couldn't afford regular accommodation.

In early September, the government finally agreed to loosen the policy and allow owners to convert their industrial buildings to accommodate small "transitional flats", but for rent only.

Chief Secretary for Administration Carrie Lam expects the change will provide a significant number of cheap, small rental flats of about 300 sq ft, to help disadvantaged people and the working poor.

But this widely applauded proposal still offers little comfort to industrial building residents. What's more important for them is to be free of fear of being forced to move out and driven back to the private rental market.

Occupants living on the rooftop of the industrial building in Kwun Tong were alerted to the arrival of a team of volunteers.

"Who is it? Where are you from?"people asked. But the kind gesture by Sze and her volunteer group was quickly accepted. Volunteers knocked on doors one by one to distribute mooncakes and some fruits.

Shi, one of the occupants, is a divorcee, living in one of the tin houses with her 19-year-old daughter and a 17-year-old son, both of whom are still in school.

Shi, who didn't want to give her full name, rents the 300-sq-ft place at a monthly rate of HK$2,600. As a new immigrant, she is not eligible for public housing. She can't work because she lost her left kidney to cancer. Living on the Comprehensive Social Security Assistance of the two children, the family can not afford a normal place. "Even a 120-sq-ft sub-divided unit costs more than HK3,000 a month. We need a larger place. My children are not kids anymore," she told China Daily.

The tin house was empty and rusted when they moved in. They painted the walls by themselves, and bought the cheapest plastic sheets to cover the floor. Most of the furniture was donated to them. They bought from some second-hand markets at very low prices. Now they have a real home.

Summer is the most difficult of all seasons, because of the frequent rain and strong winds. Shi said she was "scared to death" when the Signal No 10 typhoon Vicente hit Hong Kong in July. "The roof and walls were making very loud noises all night. Rainwater was leaking in. We didn't sleep." Over and above that staying in the tin house can be tortuous in the hot days from June through August. "Even the tables became too hot to touch," she said, "but we don't want to use air conditioning. Electricity is more expensive in industrial buildings than in private housing."

Shi looked very nervous, speaking to a journalist. "Don't mention the building's name. Don't take photos of us, please. We can't let them (the government) find out," she said.

The occupants are worried that what's happening in Tai Kok Tsui will happen to them.

Tai Kok Tsui is an old industrial district at the west of Mong Kok. Unlike those industrial buildings that have already turned into commercial buildings in Tai Kok Tsui many are still accommodating hardware engineering factories. Steel piles are placed at the shops along the streets. The sounds of drilling and cutting are ear-piercing. The air has a metallic odor.

Over 60 occupants at 78 and 78A Larch Street and dozens of others at 69 Bedford Road were forced to move after the Buildings Department was granted court orders to demolish the illegal sub-divided domestic cubicles in March 2012.

The 50-year-old building at 69 Bedford Road was previously exposed when a local newspaper reported that a flat on the sixth floor was divided into 46 units of 50 sq ft each.

In April the department kicked off a large-scale enforcement action against sub-divided domestic cubicles, with a target of inspecting 30 industrial buildings each year.

According to the Buildings Department, around 260 subdivided flats involving 1,900 cubicles in 30 industrial buildings were inspected by the end of August. Among them 27 flats involving 344 cubicles were identified as residential flats. Thus far, 185 cubicles have been demolished.

"There are more in Tai Kok Tsui that received a closure order recently," Sze said, "They don't want to move. They are planning to stay to the last minute."

"Honestly, I don't think most of those cubicles (in industrial buildings) were that bad, compared with the coffin rooms and cage homes," the social worker said, "Of course there are terrible ones occasionally. I have seen one floor divided into three layers like a sandwich."

She expects that even under the new policy, converted industrial buildings will continue to provide tiny units for people at the grassroots. The government is thinking about 300-sq-ft flats. But Sze suggests even smaller size.

"A 300-sq-ft flat is big enough for a family. There should also be 100-sq-ft cubicles rented at less than HK$2,000 a month for single persons."

It will take six months to a year to revise the planning and building regulations.

"I mean, since the government now allows domestic use, I hope they would also consider suspending the enforcement temporarily, at least don't demolish those cubicles that are not dangerous."

"Those people have no other place to go. They can just move from one industrial building into another that the government won't know where they've gone."

69 Bedford Road, where dozens of occupants were forced to move out after the Buildings Department was granted court orders to demolish the illegal sub-divided domestic cubicles in March.

(HK Edition 09/28/2012 page4)