Tiny Toilet Room With Partial Wall For Rent in Hong Kong
Hong Kong news magazine HK01 recently toured a 30-square-foot “toilet subdivided room” (廁所劏房) renting for 2000 HKD a month (around $250). Reporters responded to a listing at a rundown low-rise building in the city’s Kwai Chung district and found this.
What you get is a sink overlapping a toilet, and a space that’s not large enough to fit an average adult lying flat on the ground. At just five feet long, you would have to lay on your side with your legs tucked in, despondently. The landlord helpfully includes a small bit of wall so you don’t have to stare at the toilet all night. Clearly stunned at the stark horror that is just 30 square feet, the reporter sits there on the toilet and turns on the sink faucet. At least the water works.
Hong Kong 01 helpfully mocked up how it would look to curl up and cry yourself to sleep.
@abnormcore they offer a whole 155cm to lie down!!!!! (for imperialists, that is about 5ft) pic.twitter.com/j92lUyCyTQ
— Peter Yeh (@VerdaFolio) August 5, 2016
For storage, there is one carry-on worth of shelf space above the sleeping area and a locker located in the hallway if you are foolhardy enough to own other things.
Hong Kong is notorious for its subdivided flats where entire families live in rooms smaller than a parking space and single units are split into multiples for lucrative renting. Despite measures by the government, housing prices continue to rise and contributed to the “Umbrella Movement” pro-democracy protests in 2014. Hong Kong was rated as the least affordable city in the world by the US think tank Demographia, with New York ranked a mere 7th. At the rate New York is going, we’ll get the option of living in a dive bar’s bathroom with the stall toilet ripped out soon enough.
