Resettlement_Department_Annual_Report_1964-1965 — Page 8

3. Attempts to solve the problem date back to 1948 when persons in the central urban areas, mostly living on war-damaged sites, were offered the opportunity to resettle in what were then more outlying districts. These were called 'resettlement areas' and in them settlers built their own huts, while Government provided certain basic requirements, such as paths, drains, a water supply, latrines and public lighting. This was followed, from 1952 onwards, by the construction of considerable numbers of cottages for rent or sale to squatters by charitable and non- profit making organizations, notably the Hong Kong Settlers Housing Corporation and the National Catholic Welfare Conference. Uuseful 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 Christmas 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 precipitated 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. Then, in April 1954, the Resettlement 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 previously been the responsibility of divisions of the Urban Services Department, Public Works Department and Social Welfare Office. What was originally a temporary department with a small staff has, in its 11 years of life, grown to large proportions and has come to stay. By the end of March 1965 it was managing the 17 estates and 12 factory blocks built by the Public Works Department, and 14 cottage areas: it was landlord to 777,000 people and had cleared 3.7 square miles of precious land (about one-hundredth of the Colony's total land area) for development. Its foreseeable future is the more effective control of further squatting, the speeding up of the tempo of resettlement, and the improvements of conditions in and the administra- tion of the estates.

REVIEW OF THE YEAR

4. Against the above background, the rest of this chapter contains a brief review of the year, another particularly eventful one for the department. A fuller account will be found in the following chapters.

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