The blog Big Lychee sums it up here here and here: If you don’t have an illegal structure in your home, there is something wrong with you. Maybe you have something to hide that you go through the painful and impossible process to legalize your amendments? Maybe you prepare for the long and slimy process of becoming Chief Executive Looter? Maybe you don’t actually live in Hong Kong, but bought your estate just for money laundering?
There is something seriously wrong with the way Hong Kong handles it’s building licensing. Though in effect Hong Kong has probably the most liberal and non-interventionist policy towards construction, everyone in Hong Kong is a criminal in the eyes of the authorities.

While that has little effect right now, it is quite evident that any refusal of the government to clear up legislation and provide amnesty will both leave construction laws completely useless and allow for an arbitrary excuse for a CCP friendly government official to crack into your home and lock you up.
It is also quite obvious that affordable housing is not possible without subdivision.
This reminds me again and again of how large the problem associated with the governments’s restrictive sale of land is, and how this policy not just accounts for a large portion of Hong Kong income inequality (read this article on Hong Kong’s tycoons), but also eats up income like a giant tax on housing.
Today I would like to show you my favorite pictures of building extensions that do not exactly look approved.

This is an interesting, yet invasive documentary on “Hong Kong’s Cage Dwellers” that sadly appears like poverty-pornography, especially with the snotty British accent and the deprecating use of subtitles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU4jjdRzy3w