REVIEW OF HOUSING CONDITIONS IN HONG KONG
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Thus, by 1950 the population was estimated to be nearly 2.1 millions, and as the houses were filled to capacity people overflowed into the streets and erected virtually overnight large squatter settlements on the urban periphery, on the roofs of buildings and in sheltered coastal embayments on boats.
Yet a further problem which added to the burdens of the population and the administration was that in 1951 the United Nations imposed an embargo on trade to the Mainland due to the intervention of China in the Korean War. This action virtually eliminated the entrepot trade from which Hong Kong drew economic sustenance and a radical reorientation of productive enterprise had to be achieved through the development of manufacturing industry, upon which the Colony has since thrived.
By and large, the task of providing new housing during the immediate post-war years was left to private enterprise, but its resources were unequal to the task. In December 1953, however, a disastrous fire in a squatter settlement at Shek Kip Mei in Kowloon made 53,000 people homeless overnight and the government initiated an emergency programme to build basic resettlement accommodation. Since then, the resettlement programme has been greatly expanded and has been augmented by other forms of subsidised accommodation, about which more is said below.
Despite the commencement of Government participation in the large-scale provision of housing, the rapid rate of population growth combined with low family incomes continued to create acute housing problems, the extent of which came to light as the result of a sample survey24 carried out by the University of Hong Kong in 1957 as part of a report by a special committee on housing.
The survey was based on a 1.6% sample of some 118,000 tenement floors and covered 1,265,000 persons comprising 267,000 households. It was found that roughly 70% of households had a living area of less than 120 sq. ft. each, and that of the accommodation occupied 49.2% comprised cubicles, 25% bed spaces, 24.7% rooms used for general living purposes, 7.6% rooms used other than for sleeping, 5.0% verandahs and 4.8% cocklofts. "Doubling up" of families was found to be widely prevalent, as indicated by the fact
24 Maunder W. F. and Szczepanik E. F., Hong Kong Housing Survey 1957, University of Hong Kong contained in the Final Report of the Special Committee on Housing 1956-1958, Hong Kong, 1958.