on the streets. Some of these squatter colonies had populations of more than 50,000 persons constituting a grave health, fire and security risk, and occupying sites urgently needed for building. With depressing regularity, disastrous fires used to sweep through the areas they occupied-in one calamitous night, on Christmas Day, 1953, 50,000 people were made homeless within a few hours when a huge fire destroyed the Shek Kip Mei squatter area. That tragedy sparked off the setting up of a Resettlement Department, which in just over five years has resettled nearly 280,000 squatters, mostly in multi-storey estates, at a capital cost of nearly $100,000,000. Much more still remains to be done in this field, and only recently has it been possible to turn some attention to the large numbers of people living on the streets.*
15. As private enterprise appeared to be doing little to provide accommodation of a good standard at reasonable rents, and as no appreciable progress was being made towards a solution of the housing problem the Government decided in 1953 that it should invest in low- cost housing on as large a scale as the Colony's finances permitted. and at the same time encourage private enterprise to build better housing. It was in these circumstances and in the face of this huge problem that the Hong Kong Housing Authority was brought into being.
CHAPTER II
ORGANIZATION OF THE
HONG KONG HOUSING AUTHORITY
CONSTITUTION
16. The Hong Kong Housing Authority was created in April, 1954, with the enactment of the Housing Ordinance, No. 18 of 1954. It is composed of all members of the Urban Council, ex-officio, together with the Commissioner for Housing, ex-officio, and not more than three persons to be nominated by the Governor: only two such appointments have, in fact, so far been made. The Chairman of the Urban Council is ex-officio Chairman of the Authority. A list of members is given in Appendix I.
17. Under the terms of the Ordinance the Authority was given wide powers to deal with the housing problem in many of its aspects.
* Details of the work of the Resettlement Department can be found in the
Commissioner for Resettlement's report for 1958/59.
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