Resettlement_Department_Annual_Report_1964-1965 — Page 7

2. At the end of March 1965, there were in round figures 777,000 people living in the resettlement estates and cottage areas; but over 620,000 people still remained in surveyed squatter areas or on rooftops, of whom nearly 80,000 were living in resite areas. (This figure excludes the large squatter population in the New Territories outside Tsuen Wan district, which is not the concern of the Resettlement Department). These two categories--ex-squatters now resettled and squatters not yet resettled -together make up more than one-third of Hong Kong's total popula- tion. How did a situation of this size arise? The roots of the problem go back to the war and the immediate post-war period. During the Japanese occupation, many residents had left or been expelled from the Colony, and the population at the end of the war had dropped to 600,000. The liberation of Hong Kong, followed by the political situation in China, led to the return of former residents together with great numbers of immigrants, so that by 1950 the population had risen 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 in the urban areas and then on the hillsides. Many of these 'squatters' (the legal definition is given in Chapter II below) were of course refugees from China, but considerable numbers were old Hong Kong residents who had been bought out of their homes by wealthier immigrants. In spite of the tremendous amount of home-building which has taken place in recent years in both the Government and private sectors, even today squatting continues on a large scale. Refugees continue to enter Hong Kong, nowadays in a trickle but occasionally in a flood, as in the summer of 1962. There is the rapid natural increase in population, gross overcrowding in tenements and, what is becoming more and more pertinent as the pace of redevelopment of old property speeds up, many of the tenants thus displaced find them- selves unable to rent or purchase new accommodation within their means and are thus forced to turn to squatting. In spite of constant action by the department, it is estimated that between 5,000 and 6,000 new illegal structures or extensions to old ones exist at any one time, quite apart from the 46,000 ground huts and 9,500 rooftop huts, all illegal but 'tolerated' following surveys made at various times between 1959 and 1964. The squatter population has, it is estimated, grown at the rate of about 100,000 a year.

2