Resettlement_Department_Annual_Report_1968-1969 — Page 8

as paths, drains, a water supply, latrines and public lighting. This was followed, from 1952 onwards, by the construction of cottages for rent or sale to squatters by charitable and non-profit making organiza- tions, notably the Hong Kong Settlers Housing Corporation and the National Catholic Welfare Conference.

4. Useful 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 scarcity of land in the Colony this form of land utilization was quite uneconomic. On Christmas Day 1953 a fire broke out in the densely crowded Shek Kip Mei squatter area and more than 50,000 people were made homeless. 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, temporary two-storey buildings were built on the fire site to be replaced within months by the first multi-storey housing blocks. In April 1954, the Resettlement Department was created to look after the new resettlement blocks, to take over the existing cottage areas and to 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, the Public Works Department and the Social Welfare Office, and officers from these departments formed the nucleus of the new department. By the end of March 1969 the department was managing 22 residential estates and 22 factory blocks, together with 15 cottage areas. It was the landlord of well over one million people and it had cleared for development over 4 square miles of land, more than one-hundredth of the Colony's total land area.

5. In September 1964 the Legislative Council approved a White Paper entitled 'Review of Policies for Squatter Control, Resettlement and Government Low Cost Housing' as a general guide to future policy. The White Paper provided for the setting up of 'licensed areas' under the control of the Commissioner for Resettlement in which, on payment of licence fees, the genuinely homeless would be able to erect huts and where certain minimum services would be provided. As a corollary to the establishment of licensed areas, strict control of new squatting elsewhere would continue to be enforced. Existing tolerated structures would be contained and their removal effected by the normal process of clearance and resettlement.

6. The White Paper then set out six priorities to be followed, as far as possible, in determining eligibility for resettlement. These were:

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