ble and non-profit making organizations, notably the Hong K Housing Corporation and the National Catholic Welfare Co..
6. Useful as these attempts were to come to grips with the problem., they could be no more than palliatives. There were far too many squatters and with the crying shortage of land in the Colony, this form of land utilization was quite uneconomic. It became obvious that multi- storey blocks were the only answer, but before any decision was taken the greatest fire in Hong Kong's history occurred. Overnight, on Christ- mas Day 1953, 53,000 people living in the densely packed Shek Kip Mei squatter area in Kowloon lost their homes. Although by no means the first serious fire in a squatter area this was the worst, and it pre- cipitated Government action on a large scale. Within weeks, the first two-storey buildings were ready on the fire site and within months, the first six-storey (later seven-storey) blocks. In April 1954, the Resettle- ment Department was created to look after the new resettlement blocks, take over the existing cottage areas and be generally responsible for the control and resettlement of squatters. Some of these duties had previ- ously been the responsibility of divisions of the Urban Services Depart- ment, Public Works Department and Social Welfare Office, and officers from these formed the nucleus of the new department. What was originally a temporary department is now here to stay and, after thirteen years, is the fifth largest department in terms of staff and is still growing rapidly. By the end of March 1967 it was managing the 21 domestic estates and 22 factory blocks built by the Public Works Department, together with 14 cottage areas. It was landlord to well over 900,000 people and had cleared over 4 square miles of land, more than one- hundredth of the Colony's total land area, for development.
7. September 1964 saw the latest important landmark in the history of the squatter problem in Hong Kong, when the Legislative Council approved the White Paper entitled 'Review of Policies for Squatter Control, Resettlement and Government Low Cost Housing' as a general guide to future policy. The White Paper, which revised and brought up to date the policies to which the department had, with a few relatively minor modifications, worked since its inception, followed in many respects the recommendations of the Working Party on Squatters, Reset- tlement and related matters which was set up in June 1963. It provided for the setting up of 'licensed areas' under the control of the Com- missioner for Resettlement in which, on payment of licence fees, the genuinely homeless would be able to erect huts, and where certain minimum services would be provided. Initially at least, and unless a
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