'Feels like a bun steamer': HK's poorer residents worst hit as city sizzles

Many feel unwell in cramped housing with bad ventilation and trapped heat

- Magdalene Fung

Home for Ms Jo is a metal-encased rooftop structure in Kowloon, Hong Kong, where she has been suffering from heat-induced headaches for days.

“It’s so hot in the day that you can get burned from touching the metal walls,” said the restaurant worker, adding that she sweats a lot and the heat makes sleeping at night difficult.

Ms Jo, who is in her 50s, lives with two others in the 200 sq ft rooftop home. She wanted to be known only by her surname for privacy reasons.

“Our home feels like a bun steamer,” she said.

She is one of thousands of residents in low-income housing in the territory who are the worst hit by the ongoing extreme heat that Hong Kong is facing this summer.

The city recorded its hottest day so far in 2024 on July 7, with temperatures reaching 35 deg C in several areas.

The Hong Kong Observatory has issued “very hot weather” warnings for all except two days since June 20. Under the warning, residents are reminded to take more precautions to avoid prolonged sun exposure and heatstroke.

With temperatures set to stay high in the coming days, impoverished residents living in Hong Kong’s subdivided flats, rooftop structures and cage homes are suffering the most, according to the Society for Community Organisation (SoCO), a non-governmental organisation.

More than 90 per cent of those living in such “inadequate housing” reported feeling unwell, and experiencing health issues and difficulties sleeping, because their living quarters were too hot, according to a recent SoCO survey published on July 7.

The study polled more than 300 people between June and early July on how the summer heat had been affecting them physically, mentally and financially.

“The dwellers in such housing are facing significantly more hardships in this intense summer heat,” SoCO deputy director Sze Lai Shan told The Straits Times.