Hellish Housing Conditions

The New Delhi, India, neighborhood of Lutyens’ Delhi houses some of the richest people in the country in comparatively modest mansions, with the city’s real estate bubble inflating prices to nine figures, though home sales are rare, according to a March New York Times item. In similarly wealthy Hong Kong’s “gritty, working-class West Kowloon neighborhood,” where workers serving the rich live, about 100,000 dwell in pitiable housing, including an increasing number renting what are basically stacks of wire sleep cages, about 16 square feet each (offering no protection against bedbugs). An Associated Press reporter found one tenant paying about $167 a month for his mesh digs.