HOUSING AND LAND
99
Compounding this, groups of young immigrants have been active in building squatter huts on the fringes of urban Kowloon for sale to even newer arrivals. Considerably increased action by the Housing Department's squatter control force, and its expansion to the main urban areas of the New Territories, has not been able to stop this spread entirely and, in 1980, it became apparent that increasing numbers of people were living as squatters in simple huts and more permanent structures.
Not surprisingly, the greatly increased congestion in squatter areas has led to several large fires. These, in turn, have resulted in the virtual swallowing-up of all remaining accommodation in temporary housing areas, which are provided for that purpose and for people who have to be moved during land clearances and who are not eligible for permanent housing. Under this pressure the Housing Authority has been forced to re- examine the eligibility criteria for both permanent and temporary housing and, during 1980, a number of major changes were introduced. Permanent housing is now offered to squatter families in 1976-surveyed huts with 15 years or more residence in Hong Kong. Furthermore, in urban areas, overcrowded families living in old Mark I and II blocks which are not due for redevelopment in the next few years are offered the opportunity of moving to new estates. Premises recovered in this way are then made available for allocation as temporary housing spaces under a new 'primary housing' scheme. Other groups, particularly new arrivals occupying huts built illegally in the urban areas, continue to be given temporary housing in the new towns outside the urban area.
The large number of flats completed in the 1979-80 financial year 32,198 - enabled the authority to allocate a much-increased quota to people on the waiting list and, for the first time since 1973, the number housed surpassed new registrations. However, with about 150,000 families on the list and the typical waiting time being about seven years, the list remains unacceptably long. Continued efforts are being made to reduce the waiting time so that ultimately, registration on this list, with its careful criteria of need, will become the normal method of entry to permanent public housing.
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The influx of immigrants from China up to October, 1980, was reminiscent, albeit on a different scale, of the very conditions that led to the birth of Hong Kong's public housing programme 26 years ago.
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In the five years leading up to 1950, an immense influx of Chinese immigrants boosted the population from 600,000 to more than two million. The excess of births over deaths was more than 1,000 a week, and there was nowhere to live. The stock of about 170,000 dwellings mostly in substandard, pre-war tenements devoid of proper sanitary and living facilities - was manifestly inadequate. Division and further sub-division into cubicles and bed spaces robbed entire floors of light and air. The late-comers, and those who could not bear the desperate overcrowding nor afford the soaring rents, took to paddy fields and steep hillsides where they built flimsy squatter huts which, at that time, housed a quarter of the population.
A disastrous fire, which broke out in the Shek Kip Mei squatter area of Kowloon on Christmas Day, 1953, and left 50,000 people homeless, was the catalyst for Hong Kong's housing programme. Within 53 days, the Public Works Department had built a series of two-storey blocks to provide emergency housing for 35,000 of the fire victims. During 1954, a Resettlement Department was formed to clear and rehouse squatters in six and seven-storey resettlement blocks that are still a feature of the urban scene.
A Housing Authority was also set up to build and manage a better type of public housing for which tenement dwellers, living in crowded conditions and earning low incomes, could apply through a waiting list. More than 50 estates were built providing