Mind the Gap | Hype aside, what’s the mental effect of a young workforce living in cramped co-living conditions?

Reading Time:3 minutes

Interior of co-living space at 53 Shouson Hill Road in Hong Kong. Photo: SCMP/Nora Tam

Published: 5:10pm, 7 Jan 2018Updated: 10:29pm, 7 Jan 2018

Hong Kong’s property developers are promoting the trend of “co-living” space as the new, wonderful and inevitable lifestyle for young people seeking to enter Hong Kong’s impossibly expensive real estate market.

This exposes a deep, exploitive fault line between the standard of living being imposed by private developers on the public. They threaten the health of Hong Kong’s young workforce and make attracting foreigners impossible into a new, knowledge economy.

Co-living would be the driving force of Hong Kong’s future property market, Richard Yue, chief executive officer of Arch Capital Management, said in a January 2 interview with the South China Morning Post.

He claimed co-living was already a proven success in Europe and the US. However, co-living wasn’t the main, or only option for living in those countries. “Co-living could be the answer for students and young professionals in need of affordable options in Hong Kong,” he said.

No one talks about the other genuine alternative: reforming Hong Kong’s private property market to create affordable housing, which is suitable for human living.

Co-living is a deceptively cruel concept by developers to sell ever tinier flats to propel and justify higher market prices. And if they can get away with micro flats and co-living, then they’ll be selling coffins as “hip lifestyle alternatives.”