14
HONG KONG ANNUAL REPORT
The settlements varied in size. The largest, Shek Kip Mei, once accommodated 80,000 persons. In 1953 it was estimated that there was a total of 300,000 squatters. (That figure has subsequently been increased. Following upon a survey made in late 1955, it was estimated that those resettled and those awaiting resettlement total something like 500,000.) The squatters were gregarious by nature and perhaps found that larger communities offered greater scope for a livelihood, for organization, and for protection from the various authorities. However that may be, the fact that they did organize them- selves in very large units had two important effects: it - eventually facilitated clearance by way of vast building projects which could alone make any impression on the immensity of the problem, and for the moment it made the danger to the community as a whole infinitely more im- mediate and more serious.
The immediate danger lay in two directions: public health and fire. There were, of course, other strains and stresses which this situation imposed on the community-the potential threat to law and order, political complications, the gross overtaxing of medical and educational services, the steriliza- tion of virtually all the land suitable for development, the strain on an imported food supply, a water shortage worse than the Colony had ever known, a housing shortage which would have been serious even if there had been no squatters --all these problems would have to be tackled in due time, but for the moment the really vital risks lay in the danger of a widespread epidemic or in a major conflagration. By some miracle the first of these dangers never materialized. The second did, time and time again; and it is one of the ironies of this desperate situation that it was fire that cleared the first site for a 'decanting' scheme of resettlement which is now accepted as the only feasible solution to the problem, and which is still continuing today.
Why was that solution so long in coming? Why was a situation in which, on current estimates, 300,000 people lived