Sleeping on the street is bad enough, but Hong Kong's notorious cage homes and cubicles are even worse.
That is the view of an academic who has studied homelessness in Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan and Korea for a decade.
'I was really shocked and surprised when I first went to cage houses and cubicles here. It was astonishing,' Osaka City University researcher Geerhardt Kornatowski said, referring to the Hong Kong flats divided into bed spaces walled off by wire barricades.
Kornatowski, who has visited Hong Kong more than 10 times in the past six years, told of the reaction of an Indian scholar with expertise in urban development when he took her to a cage house.
'She said it was the first time that she had ever witnessed a living environment worse than an Indian slum. I cannot agree more - living on the streets is better than in cage houses,' he said.
'It is unbearable. There is no privacy at all and everyone has to pack together in a tiny place with poor hygiene. The lack of windows and air conditioning means poor ventilation and that is bad for people's health as well.'