Vox‘s Johnny Harris looks at housing in Hong Kong, noting that it is rated the least-affordable housing market in the world. (At least the English-speaking world, China, Japan, and Singapore, which are the housing markets reviewed in Wendell Cox’s 14th International Housing Affordability Survey). Harris shows living conditions roughly similar to the 1890 tenements of New York City documented by Jacob Riis in How the Other Half Lives.
Harris reveals that housing prices aren’t high because Hong Kong has run out of land. Instead, he notes, “Flying over Hong Kong, you start to see that, while yes, there’s a very dense urban landscape, but there’s also a whole lot of green space. Government land-use data says that 75 percent of the land in Hong Kong is not developed.” Continue reading
