velopment into resettlement estates, together with their businesses into estate shops and their small-scale industries into workshops or separate factory estates; to administer and maintain these estates and cottage areas; and to provide and supervise temporary resite areas for those made homeless by fire, landslide, the demolition of their old tenement houses, or other causes.
4. At the end of March 1966 there were in round figures 860,000 people living in the resettlement estates and cottage areas (including unauthorized but accepted persons living in cottage areas) although roughly 500,000 people still remained in surveyed squatter areas, on rooftops or in squatter boats; another 87,000 more were living in resite areas. (The figures exclude the large squatter population in the New Territories, outside Tsuen Wan district, where the Resettlement does not yet operate). Thus about 1,447,000 people, either resettled or squat- ters, have become the responsibility of the Resettlement Department. Together they make up almost two-fifths of Hong Kong's total popula- tion. How did such a situation arise?
5. The roots of the squatter problem go back to the Second World War and the immediate post-war period. During the Japanese occupa- tion, many residents left, or were expelled from, the Colony and the population at the end of the war dropped to 600,000 from a prewar figure of 1.6 million. The liberation of Hong Kong, followed by the changing political situation in China, led to the return of former resi- dents together with great numbers of immigrants, so that by 1950 the population had arisen to over 2,300,000. Existing accommodation, already overcrowded before 1941 and badly depleted during the war years, was completely unable to cope with the numbers involved. The result was that those who could not find conventional housing took to building shacks illegally wherever they could find space for them, at first within built up areas and then on the hillsides. Many of these 'squatters' (the legal definition is given in Chapter 2) were of course new immigrants from China, but considerable numbers were old Hong Kong residents who had lost their homes during the war or had been bought out by wealthier immigrants. In spite of the tremendous amount of home building which has taken place in recent years in both the public and private sectors, the redevelopment of old tenement build- ing sites, the recent introduction of a more liberal policy towards the homeless (in that they may now be allocated sites on which to build temporary huts pending resettlement) and the offer of immediate re-
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