The number of registered street sleepers in Hong Kong fell to a 10-year low of 795 in the 2023-24 financial year, but frontline workers have said the actual figure is likely to be higher due to increased evictions from public areas by the government.
Although an increase in the supply of housing in recent years has benefited some street sleepers, social workers said more homeless-friendly policies were necessary to better address the complex needs of the unsheltered and bring down their numbers.
The 795 street sleepers recorded in 2023-24 marked a 40 per cent decline from the 1,441 in the prior financial year, and also the first time the figure had fallen into the three digits since 2017-18, according to figures revealed by the Social Welfare Department in early April.
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For the 2024-25 financial year, the government has only provided the figure for the first nine months – 672 as of December.
Deep Ng Siu-hong, head of programmes at ImpactHK, an NGO serving homeless people, said the government figures were inaccurate because frontline workers continued to see an increase in demand for services.
“We cannot jump to the conclusion that the situation is improving just by looking at this figure,” he said.
“Some homeless people have disappeared from view in recent years because they were evicted from their usual spots, such as underpasses and footbridges, where the government placed many barriers to prevent them from going back.”
As a result, they sought refuge in more inconspicuous spots in housing estates and malls, or even public toilets, many of which were not covered by service teams, he said.
The underpass at the end of Oak Street in Tai Kok Tsui was one example. It used to be frequented by street sleepers, until authorities put up barricades to carry out repainting last year.
The tunnel is now empty and cleared of all possessions, with the mosaic tiled walls replaced by brightly painted murals of cherry blossom trees and Hong Kong’s skyline.
The street sleeper registry is compiled by social workers belonging to government-subsidised service teams and NGOs, who help the homeless find accommodation and financial aid to reintegrate into society.
By the end of last year, there were 228 short-term hostel places for the homeless, with an average occupancy rate of 73 per cent.
Government teams assisted 187, 156, and 116 street sleepers in the past three financial years respectively, helping them secure accommodation ranging from short-term hostels to public rental flats. The 116 figure for the 2024-25 financial year represents data up to the end of December 2024.
But Ng said some street sleepers were reluctant to be registered due to a lack of trust in government officials and called for more homeless-friendly policies to be put in place.
“It takes time to engage them and build trust so they give you their personal information [for registration]. In the meantime, they also face evictions by officers from other departments – how can they tell which one is helping them? How can they trust the services in the first place?”
In October of last year, six police officers received jail sentences of up to 41 months for framing a homeless man for drug possession in 2020 and destroying evidence.
Separately, in 2022, nine street sleepers were each awarded HK$100 (US$13) in compensation after a court found that police and the Leisure and Cultural Services Department mishandled and discarded their belongings during a 2019 clearance operation.
The victims, some of whom were physically disabled, were forced to rummage through garbage for their cash and travel documents.
Ng Wai-tung, a community organiser from the Society for Community Organisation (SoCO), said that some street sleepers fell through the cracks because of increased security at covered public venues after opening hours and many rounds of evictions.
But he acknowledged the positive impact of the increased housing supply, saying he referred more than 100 street sleepers to transitional homes every year. These were mainly smaller flats located in the New Territories that were less popular among regular families, and the rent was covered by financial aid.
“The living conditions in those flats are way more attractive than those in short-term hostels. You have the whole flat to yourself instead of a bed space, and you don’t need to share the washroom with others,” he said.
“You can only stay in hostels for six months, but the tenancy period for transitional homes is two years, which makes their life more stable.”
The transitional homes are open to residents who have waited for public rental flats for at least three years or those who have urgent housing needs due to a sudden change in their family circumstances, such as domestic violence or forced eviction.
According to the Housing Bureau, more than 11,000 transitional flats were put into operation between 2023 and 2024.
But both social workers noted that providing more shelter did not necessarily address the complex needs of street sleepers.
ImpactHK’s Deep Ng said that about 30 per cent of street sleepers who were given a place to stay would return to homelessness due to psychological problems, underscoring the need for more emotional support.
SoCO’s Ng Wai-tung said some homeless were reluctant to move into temporary flats in the New Territories because their social networks, which were important to them, were in the city centre.
“They want to run into someone they know when walking on the street,” he said. “They want to live in areas with a high intensity of chain restaurants, so they can get leftover food more easily. All these things would vanish if they moved elsewhere.”
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