The problem...
In the five years chat followed the change to Communist Government in China in 1949 nearly one million people flooded into Hong Kong, a land already suffering from a serious housing shortage. But once they reached the Colony, they found there was nowhere for them to live. The tenement blocks of the poorer areas were already overcrowded and the great majority of the refugees owned nothing save the clothes they wore. To provide shelter from the heat of the sun and the summer torrents of rain, they built themselves huts out of scrap wood, old corrugated iron and even cardboard boxes. Squatter shacks spread across the hillsides like an ugly rash; the alleyways between the tenement blocks became dark and cave-like as the homeless bedded down stretching cardboard and canvas above their heads; and even the rooftops were dotted with fragile shelters. Inevitably the shanty towns became prey to the havocs of fire and flood. The Government had already started a housing programme and welfare organisations had built cottage areas but it was all hopelessly inadequate to cope with a problem which increased daily as more immigrants arrived and the birth. rate raced towards a staggering 100,000 a year.
Disaster followed disaster until, on Christmas night 1953, the worst of all occurred-the great fire of Shek Kip Mei in Kowloon. Flames ravished the tinder-dry makeshift shacks. That night 50,000 people lost their homes and all of their possessions. And in the morning the pall of black smoke hung over Hong Kong like a great question mark. What was to be done for the victims? Within hours the Government announced that homes would be built to resettle every homeless person, in a massive housing programme. So began the greatest, the most ambitious resettlement scheme the world has known. It still goes on, gathering momentum month by month and slowly catching up with the huge human problem which itself increases month by month as the number of births goes up and older buildings have to come down.
the facts
...t
after
At the end of April 1967, 13 years squatter clearance began, à total of 933,697 people (or 160,116 familles) had been resettled. For administrative purposes a child under ten counts as half an adult and the average family consists of four and a half adults-say a married couple, a grandparent and three young children. With two members of the family working, their income would be about HK$400 (£24, US$70) a month. Their rent in the older blocks would be HK$18 a month, or 44% of income. for 120 square feet and in the newer blocks HK$35, or 82% of income, for 129 square feet. The rents are calculated to cover annual recurrent costs and administration and to recover the capital outlay in 40 years at 3 per cent interest.
Numbers rehoused so far represent 25% of the population.
Twenty-one resettlement estates comprising 422 blocks have been opened. The biggest completed estate is Wong Tai Sin housing 88,000 people. Under construction is Tsz Wan Shan which will house more than 170,000.
The capital cost is so far HK$645 million (£40 million, US$13 million). The total cost is borne solely by the Hong Kong Government,
Rent arrears written off amount to $1 for every $5,000 collected. Apartments are undecorated and unglazed, the tenant being responsible. Cooking is done in a corner of the room or on the balcony.
Beds are almost invariably two tier bunks curtained for privacy. Simple home industries like plastic flower assembling are permitted in the rooms.
All squatter huts are illegal in Hong Kong but those built prior to a final survey in 1964 are "tolerated". New huts or extensions to existing huts are demolished. However the Government provides re-site areas with water supplies and toilet facilities, where anyone who is genuinely homeless or has a high priority for a resettlement home can apply to build a hut. Squatters form the bulk of those moving into resettlement blocks but also eligible are tenants of buildings condemned as dangerous, and compassionate cases recommended by the Social Welfare Department. Larger apartments are set aside for families already resettled but who have outgrown the minimum 24 square feet per person.
PRINTED BY THE GOVERNMENT PRINTER, HONG KONG
Kanded to in Laird during
his wout to deny Kany
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