Hong Kong today

Slums with penthouse views highlight Hong Kong's wealth divide

Rooftop slums clutter the roofscape of Hong Kong's Sham Shui Po district -- settlements that are often tolerated by authorities.

Mushrooms are spread out to dry at this rooftop settlement in Sham Shui Po, Hong Kong.

Children on a rooftop playground in Sham Shui Po.

Air-conditioning in her dwelling in summer is Liu's greatest living expense.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Hong Kong's network of sky slums are barnacled onto roofs of tenements built in 1950s, '60s
• Mostly found in old urban areas in Kowloon -- Sham Shui Po, Kwun Tung and Tai Kok Tsui
• Contrasts with luxury apartments that can often fetch up to US$12.85 million
• Slums stem from housing crises of 1950s, 60s when waves of Chinese refugees arrived

Hong Kong today -- If you can tolerate the junkies on the stairwells or the rats that sometimes scale the 12 floors of her building on the external electrical wiring, Liu's penthouse shack ticks all the boxes for a multi-million dollar property in Hong Kong.

It's light, it's well ventilated and it has sweeping views of Kowloon's Lion Rock Hill. Constructed from recycled materials, the design is customized to her lifestyle down to the last detail.

"This is my washing machine," says Liu, pointing proudly to a small stainless steel basin on the terrace side of her rooftop house in Sham Shui Po. "I do my tai chi exercises here in the morning, and on moonlit nights I like to sit out here and look out on the mountain."

Anywhere else in Hong Kong, luxury apartments can often fetch HK$100 million (US$12.85 million), and a house with these features could easily cost the average transaction price of HK$13.25 million (US$1.7 million), according to data released by agency Midland Realty earlier this year.

Anywhere else in Hong Kong, luxury apartments can often fetch HK$100 million (US$12.85 million), and a house with these features could easily cost the average transaction price of HK$13.25 million (US$1.7 million), according to data released by agency Midland Realty earlier this year.

The only difference is that as an unprepossessing corrugated iron shack that forms part of Hong Kong's extensive network of sky slums -- technically illegal rooftop structures barnacled onto the roofs of tenements built in the 1950s and 60s -- the market is sluggish.

Nevertheless, a grey market in these slum dwellings does exist.

"Of course the agent never explicitly says it's a rooftop dwelling. The listing will say something like small apartment with a unique view or interesting features," says Dr. Ernest Chiu of Hong Kong University who has studied informal housing.

World's most expensive luxury city is...

She contends prices could even exceed this, making Liu's hand-built shanty one of the most expensive slum dwellings in the world.

According to the latest Hong Kong census from 2006, there are 3,962 rooftop dwellers in 1,556 households in Hong Kong. Mostly found in old urban areas in Kowloon -- Sham Shui Po, Kwun Tung and Tai Kok Tsui -- the houses are crammed together so tightly that they form their own above-ground streetscapes, complete with gardens, playgrounds and places of worship.

The slums are a hangover from the housing crises of the 1950s and 1960s when successive waves of refugees from mainland China set up squatter cities in Hong Kong. Many of the residents have lived in the slums for more than 30 years, and new arrivals tend to be underprivileged migrants from either mainland China, Pakistan, Nepal or other parts of the Asia.

Since 2001, when 16,359 people live on Hong Kong's rooftops, the number of illegal dwellings has reduced dramatically. While government policy has played a part, more often the tenements -- under constant pressure due to the shortage of land in Hong Kong -- are torn down to make way for new shopping and residential developments.

For the government, which supplies these rooftop communities with a postal service, water and electricity; collects rates; and even levies stamp duty on their sale and purchase, the sky slums operate under an established practice of "tolerance versus demolition," says Chiu. Their existence, while not ideal, keeps almost 4,000 people off a crowded public housing queue, he adds.