people still remained in squatter areas or on rooftops, in addition to 57,000 living in resite areas. (These figures exclude the large squatter population in the New Territories outside Tsuen Wan district, which is not the direct concern of the Resettlement Department). These two categories-former squatters now resettled and squatters not yet resettled -together make up over a third of Hong Kong's total population. How did a situation of this size arise?
3. 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 popula- tion had risen to over 2,300,000. Existing accommodation, already over- crowded before 1941 and badly depleted during the war years, was completely inadequate to house 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 2 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.
4. In spite of the tremendous amount of home-building which has taken place since the war in both the Government and private sectors, even today squatting continues although on a much diminished scale. Immigrants continue to enter Hong Kong, but nowadays in a trickle when compared with the human flood of 1962. Gross overcrowding in tenement buildings is another factor, but in recent years the main source of new squatting has been those people displaced from old tenements which are being redeveloped who find accommodation in new buildings beyond their means.
5. Attempts to solve the problem of squatting 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 arcas' 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 charita-
2
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.