Mainland migrant wives I met usually lived with their husbands when they arrived in Hong Kong on a TWP. For those whose husbands already lived in a public rental apartment provided by the Hong Kong Housing Authority, they could apply for a temporary stay to live in the same apartment (Housing Department 2010a:2). Problems in relation to TWP women’s housing needs often emerge when their husbands pass away or divorce them, causing the women to struggle to find accommodation on their own if they opt to remain in the city to take care of their Hong Kong children.
Doubly bound by their “visitor” status and financial difficulty, most ex-wives and widows lived in very poor housing conditions. TWP holders are not eligible to apply for public rental housing on their own because their stay in Hong Kong is considered “only temporary and conditional in nature” (ibid.). Women’s Hong Kong citizen children, furthermore, are often too young to meet the minimum age requirement of 18 years old to apply for it themselves. Denied a
state-sponsored “safety net” for public housing support, the ex-wives and widows and their children were forced to face one of the most expensive real estate markets in the world. With the meager social security allowance provided primarily for the citizen children from the Social Welfare Department, most single mothers and their children could only afford to live in inadequate housing such as cubicle units (usually between 30 and 50 square feet), tiny sub-divided and partitioned apartments (usually between 100 and 200 square feet), and roof-top houses, and faced a range of housing-related problems such as small living spaces, poor ventilation, and unaffordable rents.
In principle, the current Housing Authority’s Compassionate Rehousing Policy is also applicable to TWP ex-wives and widows provided that they have grave difficulties in meeting their imminent housing needs. As an official document reads:
As regards the divorced PRH [public rental housing] tenants, if either spouse is a two-way exit permit holder with substantial grounds to stay in Hong Kong, such as the dire need of looking after his/her young children in the territory, HA [Housing Authority] may, upon consideration of the case and its justifications, grant the spouse temporary stay in a PRH flat on individual merits. If a tenant has deceased and the surviving spouse is a two-way exit permit holder with substantial grounds to stay in Hong Kong, such as the need to take care of his/her Hong Kong-born young children genuinely living in a PRH flat, HA may allow him/her to stay in the flat temporarily. In this case, HA may grant the tenancy to an adult relative or a legal guardian of the children. (Housing Authority 2010b:2)
The written policy sounds promising but is rarely practiced. As Pun and Wu observe, “criteria for compassionate housing are very strict” (2006:153). In practice, the Housing Authority authorizes the Social Welfare Department to assess and approve applications for the Compassionate Rehousing category. However, social workers of the welfare department frequently follow the guidelines set out by the Housing Authority to make assessments and final decisions. These guidelines include whether applicants meet application criteria for public rental
housing which creates a “catch 22” situation.76 More importantly, the guidelines consider whether the family has already been living in the public rental apartment and whether the Hong Kong citizen children have already been added into the tenancy prior to their fathers’ death or divorce (Mainland-Hong Kong Families Rights Association 2010). There are cases in which the Hong Kong deceased fathers did not list their Hong Kong children as tenants, the surviving wives and children were forced to move out of the apartments and even the welfare department could not do anything for them (ibid.).
Over the last ten years, Yuk, a widow with three sons, struggled to find stable and affordable accommodation in Hong Kong. For several years the mother and sons had moved from one shelter to another provided by different charities for short-term stay, and had even slept on the street at night. Currently they were living in a less than 100-square-foot small sub-divided apartment in a shabby building in the Tsuen Wan district. Facing a rent increase, they probably would have to move again. Yuk had tried to apply for public rental housing through the Social Service Department but the welfare agent was indifferent to her plea. As Yuk said, “Instead, the social worker asked me, ‘You are from the mainland. Why don’t you go back to the mainland?’”
Local rights groups have brought the issue of TWP women’s housing problems to the attention of the government and politicians. At a Legislative Council meeting in July 2010, legislative councilors and rights group deputations (including a TWP widow) urged the government to handle TWP single mothers’ and their citizen children’s demand for public
76 For example, the applicant must be 18 years of age or above; a person under the age of 18 must apply together with his or her parents or a legal guardian; at the time of flat allocation, at least half of the family members must have lived in Hong Kong for seven years and are still living there (a person under the age of 18 will be deemed to have fulfilled the seven-year residence rule if he or she has established permanent resident status by being born in Hong Kong, or one of his or her parents has lived in Hong Kong for seven years); and satisfy income and asset limits (Housing Department 2010b).
housing support more flexibly.77 Nonetheless, the Housing Department representative dismissed their pleas, claiming that “having housing difficulties is not the sole criterion” to make one eligible for public housing support—the government must “give the priority to Hong Kong [adult]
citizens” when available resources are limited and demand is high (transcribed from field notes of the Legislative Council meeting on July 13, 2010; original in Cantonese). Once again, women’s “visitor” status had placed them, and often their citizen children, in a disadvantaged position relative to the locals in a membership/citizenship-based welfare system.