6Tai Kok Tsui Awakening – English Article 006 – Soco in TKT By Daniel Hemsworth

Dear Tai Kok Tsui,

I would like to introduce you to Samuel.

Samuel has been a resident of our marvellous neighbourhood since August this year. He is a squarely built man of 50 years, a little shy but with a hidden air of confidence. He is a simple man with simple needs, 3 square meals a day, occasional hiking, and church on Sundays. But if you really want to see his face light up and feel the happiness emanate from his being, just have a chat with him about his favourite comic books, “Dragon Tiger Gate”. 

On the day-to-day, he will wake up around 9am and make his breakfast at home and do his house chores before going down to the Street Sleepers Action Committee (SSAC) in Yau Ma Tei for his lunch meal box. Since mid-pandemic there are no staff on premises at the SSAC, so he must walk back home to eat, then walk back again to collect his dinner meal box. In the evening he’ll sit with his housemates and discuss local topics, talk to each other about their situations and watch some TV before turning in for the night around 11pm. 

On the weekends he will attend sermons at the Yan Fook Ministry church in Lai Chi Kok, where he was recently baptised. Together with the parishioners, he will join camping trips and read bible passages, or go on hiking adventures with his housemates and others from his community. 

Samuel had worked as a security guard for many years and was living in a small sub-divide in Sham Shui Po, but in 2016 it started to deteriorate. In the summers, as the temperature at the compound rose, he would turn to sleeping in parks, because with the rise in temperature came an intolerable increase in the bedbug infestation in those tiny and cramped spaces. Only when winter came back around would the bedbug population diminish to a tolerable state that he could return to the lodging. Then later into 2020 during the pandemic, he lost his job in security and faced even worse circumstances. That’s when he turned to SoCo for help. 

SoCo = “Society for Community Organization”.

Since 1971, SoCo has been helping the people on the margins of society to be able to live their lives with respect and decency. A big advocate for social fairness, they work for the betterment of circumstances for the underprivileged in our society. Amongst their services they help people handle complicated procedures such as applying for CSSA (the Hong Kong equivalent of a welfare subsidy), public housing applications, and even immigration issues. They supply people with food, cleaning products and housing. 

People come to SoCo for many reasons, some are from broken homes, some trying to recover from total loss due to gambling addictions. From SoCo they can join programs that will help them get back on their feet. Job placement services and saving incentive programs are designed to break bad habits and encourage healthy saving and spending routines. For the people receiving assistance services provided by SoCo, they are encouraged to participate in volunteer work for the community. For the younger men with strong bodies, they help with furniture removal for the elderly and major cleaning services including disinfection cleansing to ensure healthy living conditions at their hostel lodgings. This has become especially important in the past few years under the fear of the pandemic. On top of this, persons with special skills can also volunteer to run activities for other members by running exercise sessions, guide hiking trips and art classes. 

In Tai Kok Tsui, SoCo has an agreement with some construction development companies that provide abandoned apartments at discounted rents so that those premises can be offered as housing hostels for people in need. This is known as their “Family Home Hostel”. There are 40 beds available in TKT for men in need who can stay for up to two years while they wait for placement in public housing or save enough money to find their own accommodation.

In Samuel’s case, along with helping him with the complicated process of applying for the CSSA and public housing, he was also provided with lodging at the Tai Kok Tsui Family Home hostel on Ka Shin Street. With a cubicle to himself, he shares the hostel with five other men. There is a common area with a table, and some chairs, and a TV. The communal bathroom is clean nice, and there is a kitchen area with appliances where he can cook his breakfast and on weekends as well as wash his clothes. 

Currently Samuel prefers to remain unemployed, he says it will actually become much more expensive for him to have a job. With a job comes additional expenses such as transportation and meals, compared to now, where he has no transportation expenses and receives two meal boxes per day from SSAC. Living like this for the time being will allow him to save more money to engage in a course to gain a new qualification, thus opening more opportunities to apply for better jobs. However, because of his health issues with type 2 diabetes, he’s still a bit reluctant to jump into a full-time position too soon. 

Over the next 18 months while continuing to stay at Family Home, he will engage in more volunteer operations organised by SoCo, where he can earn a small compensation that can help him improve his lifestyle and social wellbeing. The good thing about these opportunities through SoCo is that even after the two-year period of the lodging is completed, the volunteer opportunities are always still available to him and others that have received SoCo services. 

The most important thing to him though are his comic books, falling in love with the characters the moment he discovered them when in secondary school. When he had a job in security, he could afford a storage facility to keep them tidy. Then when he became unemployed, he used lockers at the local sports centre to store them. Now he has his own space again at Family Home where he keeps them close so that he can enjoy them on a daily basis. When his friends in the church suggested he spend less money on comics so that he can enjoy a better lifestyle, he simply asks; “have you ever had something that you enjoy and cherish so much that it’s more important than anything else?” Form Samuel, it’s his comics.