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Rising to the Challenge
Hong Kong's special talent for tackling its problems with imagination and speed is nowhere better reflected than in the ambitious programme it has developed to house its crowded population. Spanning just 26 years, the housing programme has provided homes for more than 2.25 million people about four in every 10 of the population and brought new security and hope to their lives. More than 400,000 homes have been built and the number is growing at the rate 35,000 new flats each year. Sustaining this momentum is a major challenge which, in 1980, involved the production of one flat every seven-and-a-half minutes of a 12-hour working day, 365 days a year. In December, the Housing Authority's pro- gramme recorded, without pause, the completion of its 100th housing estate, On Ting which, combined with its sister estate, Yau Oi, will provide homes for 80,000 people in Tuen Mun new town. To witness the degree of advanced technology and planning that goes into a modern estate it is difficult to imagine the urgent im- provisation and daunting conditions that led to the programme's beginning. But while the quality of the solution has con- tinued to improve, the magnitude of the problem has not. With around 350,000 residents still living in old estates due for redevelopment; some 750.000 applicants now on the waiting list, and anywhere from 500.000 to 750.000 people in squatter areas. it will be many years yet before Hong Kong's public housing planners can afford to slacken their pace.
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Previous page: Elevated walkways segre gate pedestrian and vehicular traffic at Choi Wan in East Kowloon. Left: Emergency housing, built more than 25 years ago, is undergoing a massive conversion and re- development programme; a family takes over the keys to a new Home Ownership Scheme flat in Sui Wo Court at Sha Tin: Lung Tin, the first public housing estate to be built on Lantau, received its first residents during the year.
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