According to statistics from the Social Welfare Department, as of March 31, 2022, the number of registered street sleepers in Hong Kong has reached 1,564, an increase of 160% compared to 595 on March 31, 2013.
Some citizens are used to treating street sleepers coldly, and they may think that they deserve the blame; and on the registration form for street sleepers of the SWD, "personal choice" is also used as the reason for street sleepers.
However, if a person “chooses” to live in an unsafe home in order to “have a tile to cover his head”, or “chooses” to sleep on the street because of conflicts with his family, are these “choices” really made by individuals?
Homeless people can be said to be "homeless everywhere", but in fact, how far are they from home?
"Homelessness" Series Report Part 4
On the registration form for street sleepers of the Social Welfare Department, one of the reasons for sleeping on the streets is "personal choice".
(Photo by Wang Ninghui)
Suffering from the separation of work and housing, he
can only sleep on the street
Mr. Lin lives in Tin Shui Wai and does morning cleaning work in Sham Shui Po, 30 kilometers away.
He usually takes a bus from Tin Shui Wai to sleep outside Tsim Sha Tsui Cultural Center at 11 o'clock in the evening, and gets up at 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning to go to work in Sham Shui Po.
Why not go straight from home?
Because the work starts too early and there is no bus service, it takes about 30 yuan to take a minibus. Sometimes if you miss the bus, you can only take a taxi. It costs a lot of money every day.
A friend suggested that he sleep in the open at night, so he slept for three years.
"There are few jobs in Tin Shui Wai, and the (houses) in the middle are expensive. If you go to work at 7 in the morning, the one-way fare is more than 30 yuan, commuting back and forth (time-consuming), sleep less, and work for up to 10 hours—— Then I would think this is "forced to sleep rough"." Wu Weidong, a director of the Hong Kong Association of Community Organizations who has been working in caring for the homeless for many years, commented in this way.
According to "Hong Kong 2030+: Planning Vision and Strategies Beyond 2030" published by the Planning Department in 2018, the problem of "job-housing separation" in Hong Kong is serious. 41% of the population lives in non-metropolitan areas, but 76% of jobs are concentrated in metropolitan areas .
According to a 2016 commute survey by transport app moovit, Hong Kongers spend an average of 73 minutes commuting to and from get off work each day.
From time to time, tragedies of homeless people losing their lives in Hong Kong have occurred.
(Photo by Huang Weimin)
It's not that I'm lazy
, it's that I can't work
There are not many low-income homeless people like Mr. Lin, because most of the homeless are unemployed.
According to the "Hong Kong Homeless Demographic Survey 2021" released by the Yunus Social Enterprise Center of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and six non-governmental organizations, about 70% of the interviewed homeless people have no jobs, and nearly 60% of them have been unemployed for more than two years.
But different from what some people think is "good to eat and lazy", these unemployed and homeless people have helpless "unable to work".
Wei Ge used to work as a chef at a food stall, taking care of work such as fish cutting and water bar.
After the outbreak of the fifth wave of the epidemic at the beginning of last year, the restaurant's business hours were greatly shortened, and it was almost impossible to make ends meet; in order to save costs, the restaurant had to reduce its staff, and Wei Ge lost his job.
Introduced by a social worker, he had worked as a porter, but he had to carry things weighing up to 50 kilograms, and he couldn't support it because of his waist.
"I can't move, and I'm too embarrassed." Wei Ge gave up the job without waiting for the pay.
In fact, many homeless people suffer from health problems like Vigo.
According to the "Homeless People's Health and Medical Needs Study 2022" survey report released by the Hong Kong Association for Community Organization, nearly half of the respondents suffered from limb pain or joint problems, another 65% experienced dental discomfort, and 90% suffered from tooth loss.
At the same time, 77% of the respondents believed that sleeping outdoors would make their health worse, about 90% said that their sleep quality was poor, and 80% thought that they lacked a sense of security and caused mental stress.
Both physical and psychological alarms sounded, and it was natural to seek medical help.
However, half of the respondents indicated that they encountered difficulties in the process of seeking medical treatment, including no mobile phone or the inability to charge the mobile phone, making it difficult to make an appointment, query and change the follow-up date, no mailing address, making it difficult to receive hospital letters, and no safe storage Places cause medications to go missing from time to time.
In addition, 27.5% of the respondents said that they were treated maliciously or discriminated against by medical staff, mainly because "they think I am homeless".
77% of the respondents believed that sleeping outdoors would make their health worse, about 90% said that the quality of sleep was poor, and 80% thought that they lacked a sense of security and caused mental stress.
(profile picture)
Trapped in a vicious cycle of
abandoning luxury housing
Health problems are not only a pain that the homeless have to endure, but also one of the reasons that prevent them from getting out of the rough.
This constitutes a vicious cycle - poor income due to health problems, unable to afford housing, and can only be reduced to the streets, while the poor sanitation environment and insufficient medical support of street life make it difficult for them to recover, so they can only continue to sleep in the open.
However, some citizens are always used to despise the street sleepers, and even blame them for "not working hard enough" and "reaping the fruit of their own."
According to the above-mentioned "Hong Kong Homeless Population Survey 2021", among the about 500 working homeless people, the median monthly income of their current or last job is 8,000 yuan, and 20% of them have a monthly working income Less than 5,000 yuan.
As for the 1,000 homeless people who have no income from work, they mainly receive CSSA of 3,815 yuan a month or receive help from charities.
Are these numbers enough to live on, though?
According to the Census and Statistics Department, in 2019/2020, the average monthly expenditure of households is 30,230 yuan. If the average household has 2.7 members, the monthly expenditure per person is 11,196 yuan.
Among the daily expenses, housing expenses are the heaviest, and ordinary families find it difficult. For those low-income or unemployed homeless, it is even more luxurious.
Concerned about Grassroots Housing Coalition and the Institute of Future Cities of Chinese University conducted the "Inappropriate Housing Rent Survey" from early August to early September last year. The $4,800 reported by the Regulatory Research Working Group was up 4 percent, and the median monthly rent for a cubicle was $2,600.
Wu Weidong, community organization director of the Hong Kong Association for Community Organizations, pointed out that many homeless people are "forced to sleep in the rough."
(Photo by Ou Jiale)
Sleeping rough, embarrassing,
hindered on the way to job hunting
"If there is (casual work), I can do it. I'm not a lazy person." Wei Ge said that after losing his job, he often looked at job advertisements, but the progress was not optimistic.
At the age of 57, although he is an experienced chef, he still worries that "old age" is his disadvantage in job hunting, because whenever he faces competition for the same position, the shopkeeper always favors younger people.
When asked what kind of help he hoped the government would provide, Wei Ge said: "Leave some work for us to do, otherwise what else can we do?"
However, even if the government can really "stay", I am afraid that the store owners are not willing to "please", because the status of "sleeping on the rough" itself is an important obstacle in their job hunting.
Wu Weidong told reporters that most homeless people will try to hide their homeless status when they see work, and can only fill in false addresses, such as the address of a social service agency, or the place where they once lived.
Another more troublesome job-hunting obstacle is that because they don't have mobile phones, they usually have to borrow someone else's number.
According to the "2020 Hong Kong Poverty Situation Report", due to the impact of the new crown epidemic, the unemployment rate of lower-skilled workers increased significantly by 3.6 percentage points from 2019 to 6.6%, and the median monthly income of grassroots households fell by 8.1%.
Three years later, Hong Kong is still in a period of economic recession. Job supply and employment opportunities continue to decrease. Low-skilled labor is the first to bear the brunt. The burden on the "working poor" is even heavier, and they may become new or potential street sleepers.
The distance between "sleeping on the street" and "having a home" seems to be only a shelter, but it needs to take into account all aspects of medical care, food, housing, transportation, work, etc. As long as there is a missing link in one place, it may be possible. Fall back into homelessness.
When homeless people have become accustomed to life on the streets, their motivation to reintegrate into society will be less and the difficulty will be greater. Should the government and the public lend a helping hand to pull them out of the quagmire, or push them to the other side of society? …
Homelessness·Part 1｜Three sets of numbers reveal the new normal of the homeless—Is sleeping rough a personal choice?
Homeless · 2｜Homeless everywhere How far is the distance from home to the homeless?