Homeless and at rock bottom: charity fed him, gave him work and found him a place to stay
- He’d lost his job and his home and was living on the streets of Kowloon. Then Peter Leung discovered charity ImpactHK. It fed and housed him and gave him a job
- The 37-year-old works at ImpactHK’s drop-in centre, which caters to over 400 homeless, while ImpactHK volunteers stage ‘kindness walks’ to feed the destitute
At the age of 37, Peter Leung Chi-kin’s life ran into a dead end. Jobless, homeless, penniless, with no immediate family and other relatives too poor to help, eking out an existence on the streets of Hong Kong’s Kowloon peninsula was his only option.
“If I could find a seat in an all-night McDonald’s, I’d go there,” says Leung, who over the years worked as a waiter, air-conditioning mechanic, cleaner and odd-job man.
“Otherwise, I’d doss down in a park. It happened this January, so it was cold, but what else could I do? I’d been laid off and couldn’t pay the rent. I was confused, desperate, whatever I’d hoped to achieve in life wasn’t going to happen. It seemed like I was finished.”
According to unofficial estimates, there are thousands of homeless people in Hong Kong, most of them aged over 50. Government statistics acknowledge just over 1,100, but that figure only includes those who have completed a formal registration process.
For three weeks Leung scraped by, wandering the streets by day and snatching what sleep he could by night, keeping a wary eye out for drug addicts, triad gang members, and other people who could pose a danger to him. A friend let him shower at his apartment, and took care of his few possessions, but it was scant comfort.
