SECURITY guards at a shopping mall were stunned when they discovered a man had allegedly been living under the staircase for six months.
The resourceful youngster had made himself quite at home fitting out his cabin with a tent, a table, a computer and even an ergonomic chair.
He managed to evade most security guards for a concerning amount of time, despite regularly venturing out of the den to use the mall's charging sockets.
However, the man was initially busted by a lone security guard, but he took pity on him and let him stay after he said he needed a place to study for an exam.
The man lived in under the stairs at the Shanghai mall until October 30 when another guard stumbled upon his unusually organised set-up and he was arrested.
A video of the cozy home has swirled the internet and prompted mixed reactions.
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Some viewers called the man a "parasite" and said he could be dangerous, however others praised his savvy rent-avoiding tactics.
This is not the only time something like this has occurred.
On March 22 we told how a man who faced homelessness lived in a secret flat underneath a shopping mall for years before anyone noticed.
Michael Townsend, 52, and seven other artists, occupied the underground space in Providence Place, Rhode Island from 2003 to 2007 and landed on the wrong side of the law.
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The Rhode Island artist was facing homelessness in 2003 when the historic building he lived in was sold to a developer, who claimed he had a 'commercial responsibility' to takeover the building.
Townsend had already visited another of the developer's projects – Providence Place Mall, where by chance he discovered a secret, unused apartment hidden in the structure of the building.
After a slew of protests that lasted two years, the artist and several others were eventually forced out of their building to make way for a supermarket car park.
But Townsend and his displaced friends decided the fight was still far from over.
As a kind of poetic justice, they decided to illegally occupy the secret space in the mall, believing it was their civic and artistic 'responsibility' to develop the space.
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