A green group and a homelessness charity have called on the Hong Kong government to make temporary heat shelters more accessible after finding that a majority of residents in need had not used the facilities.
According to a survey that Greenpeace Hong Kong and homelessness charity ImpactHK conducted in June and July, around 65 per cent of respondents said they had not used heat shelters during the city’s sweltering summer months.
More than half of those who had not used heat shelters cited inconvenient locations as a main reason.
Among the 97 people surveyed, some 90 per cent were rough sleepers, while the remaining respondents lived in inadequate housing such as subdivided units or “coffin homes.”
The Home Affairs Department has 109 community halls and centres citywide, of which 19 are listed as temporary heat shelters — about one for each district.
“But we still can see that there are many people who find that these heat shelters are too far away,” said Greenpeace campaigner Tom Ng at a press conference on Tuesday.
He said that the government could open more community facilities as temporary heat shelters, so it would not be necessary for the authorities to build new ones.
However, he suggested those facilities should be within a 15-minute walking distance from where residents in need usually live, especially considering some rough sleepers might have disabilities or mobility issues.
As an example, he mentioned Tung Chau Street in Sham Shui Po, known as a location where a large homeless population resides. The nearest heat shelter, Shek Kip Mei Community Hall, is a 17-minute walk away, while Nam Cheong District Community Centre, which is closer, is not designated as a heat shelter.
The NGOs mentioned other governments’ policy on heat shelters. For example, Berlin is planning to shorten the maximum travel time to a heat shelter from the current 10 minutes to five minutes by 2030.
The study also found that heat shelters in districts including the Yau Tsim Mong area, Sham Shui Po, Wong Tai Sin, Kwun Tong, and Tsuen Wan were insufficient to serve low-income communities.
Negative experience
The Greenpeace-ImpactHK survey also found that more than a third of respondents who had not used heat shelters said they were not aware of the existence of such facilities, and that more than 80 per cent believed government messaging and announcements were insufficient.
Meanwhile, most respondents who had used heat shelters rated their experience negatively, with privacy receiving the lowest rating at 2.34 on a five-point scale, and 2.77 for opening hours and staff attitude. Some also said their belongings were stolen during their stay at the heat shelters.
Isaac Ho, programme manager at ImpactHK, said at the press conference that those experiences would discourage people from utilising heat shelters and increase their risk of heat-related illnesses.
A separate survey released on Sunday by two concern groups, CarbonCare InnoLab and the Kwai Chung Subdivided Units Kai Fong Association, found that summer nights in Hong Kong’s subdivided flats could feel as hot as 44°C in July.
More than 70 per cent of respondents said the extreme heat left them feeling fatigued, with frequent heat-related symptoms such as headaches, dizziness, and heart palpitations.
