Hong Kong is reforming its micro-apartments, leaving the poorest in uncertainty.

Without a personal bathroom and without a kitchen, she prepares soup or noodles in a rice cooker placed on her bed.

A foam board is taped to the bottom of her door to prevent rats and cockroaches from entering her storage unit, which she rents for 283 euros per month.

Separated by thin wooden partitions, eight other people live in cubicles in this subdivided apartment, in a 60-year-old building located in Sham Shui Po, one of the poorest districts in Hong Kong.

These subdivided apartments have been gradually eliminated since a new law came into effect in March. More than 220.000 people, out of the city's 7,5 million inhabitants, live in them, and about a third of these apartments require major renovation, according to authorities.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered the wealthy financial center to resolve the housing crisis, marked by an acute shortage of homes and exorbitant rents.

"I'm just taking it one day at a time," Ms. Lau, 48, told AFP. This welfare recipient, who lives on 7.300 Hong Kong dollars (800 euros) a month, says she doesn't know where to go.

The government has given landlords who register in the new scheme until 2030 to renovate their properties, but some have already sent eviction notices to their tenants.

The new rules require that accommodations be at least eight square meters and meet safety and hygiene standards, such as having at least one openable window, a sink and a private toilet in an enclosed space.

Unaffordable housing

The Society for Community Organisation (SOCO), an NGO working with disadvantaged residents, believes the reforms could improve some of the most difficult living conditions in Hong Kong. But more public housing is needed, according to Sze Lai-shan, SOCO's deputy director. "We shouldn't expect people living in very small apartments to be able to move into the new basic housing units. They simply won't be able to afford it," she says.

While the government has indicated that it has received notifications concerning 35 households threatened with forced evictions from their subdivided apartments, SOCO claims that many others are in a difficult situation.

Liu Xiaoli, also facing eviction from her subdivided apartment, works two part-time jobs as a cook and a cleaner to make ends meet since her divorce, and supports her daughter and granddaughter in mainland China. "If the rent here or elsewhere goes up, I really won't be able to pay it," the 63-year-old told AFP.

"Coffin houses"

When questioned by AFP, the government stated that it had "significantly increased the supply of public housing" with the aim of producing around 196.000 units over the next five years, and had accelerated the procedure for 40% of households registered on the waiting list for public housing.

"Rents for (subdivided units) should therefore not skyrocket due to the drop in demand," a spokesperson for the Bureau of Housing said in a statement.

The new rules do not apply to the worst form of accommodation: the infamous "coffin houses," boxes stacked on top of each other like bunk beds in dilapidated dormitories.

Wan Hon-cheung has been living for ten years in a plywood box the size of a single bed. He often has bedbugs, and getting in and out of bed is difficult for the 64-year-old, who walks with a cane. He hopes the government will also improve living conditions for people like him.

"For us, the working classes (...) that's reality, there's nothing to say about it."