LAND AND HOUSING
125
issued, notwithstanding that work is proceeding as the result of a decision by a committee of review.
RESETTLEMENT
Hong Kong's resettlement estates have attracted worldwide attention. Hundreds of thousands of people are being provided with housing by a low-cost building programme which, for speed and imagination, has few if any parallels. By the end of 1965 the Government of Hong Kong had become, through this programme, the direct landlord of about 815,000 people or 20 per cent of the population. An expanded building programme adopted in 1964 and reviewed annually aims at providing space for 900,000 adults by 1970. New blocks are being built at the rate of roughly one every seven days.
The resettlement programme was begun to cope with the housing problems created by a phenomenal growth in population_in the years following the Second World War. Conventional housing was quite inadequate and many thousands of people—including large numbers of immigrants from China-made homes for themselves by building shelters or huts of any materials available on any piece of vacant land. These squatter settlements spread rapidly over the urban areas of Hong Kong and Kowloon. In many places there were colonies of squatters, some of 40,000 or more, living together in a closely packed mass, with their own shops and schools, and even factories and workshops. Sanitation was primitive or non- existent; there were frequent fires and a constant threat of epidemic disease. In addition, the presence of these squatters made it im- possible to solve the very problems to which they gave rise. The houses, schools and hospitals needed for the swollen population could not be built because the land required was often occupied by squatter shacks.
The first attempt to solve the squatter problem was made in 1948 when people occupying land in the centre of the city were moved to more outlying areas, which it was then thought would not need to be re-developed for some time. Later, 'approved resettlement areas' were established where dwellings were required to be built of stone or other fire-proof materials to an approved pattern. The disadvan- tage was that these areas reproduced many of the unsatisfactory features of the squatter settlements while the majority of squatters