More than 200,000 people in Hong Kong, China, live in partitioned shoebox apartments that offer just a few feet of space. They can barely fit a double bed and have become notorious for high rents.

In wealthy Hong Kong, there's a dark side to a housing boom, with hundreds of thousands of people forced to live in partitioned shoebox apartments, "coffin homes" and other "inadequate housing.

On a sweltering summer afternoon in Hong Kong, Yeung Fong-yan’s flat felt like an oven. Her air conditioner ran at full blast ...