ENG-1976 — Page 130

8

Housing and Land

MORE than 45 per cent of the people of Hong Kong live in government subsidised public housing. This amounts to nearly two million people, of whom 97,000 were accommodated during the financial year 1976–7. The number moving into govern- ment-financed housing in 1977-8 is expected to be 109,000, and the forecast for the 1980s is 200,000 a year.

In October the Governor summed up the housing situation when he said that the back of the problem should be broken by 1984 provided all concerned maintained the pressure necessary to keep to the government's targets. He told the Legislative Council: 'The land is earmarked, the Housing Department will have the design and construction capacity, we have the finance, and many of the relevant contracts are already let.'

Hong Kong's housing problem has stemmed from the population increasing sevenfold since the end of the Second World War. In 1945 the population was 600,000; by the end of 1947 it was about 1.8 million; now it is 4.4 million. Immigrants-and particularly a great inflow of refugees in 1948-9 from the civil war in China--were a major cause of the population explosion, but the high birth rate of a young popula- tion was also an important factor. In 1954 the excess of births over deaths_was more than 1,000 a week.

The rapid increase in population put strains on all social facilities and plans, and on top of this Hong Kong was faced with an acute shortage of land suitable for development. In the early 1950s the total area of the territory was about 391 square miles. Reclamation over the years has boosted this to about 404 square miles, but much of the land is mountainous and unsuitable for development. This equation of high population and land shortage has necessitated the construction of high-rise housing projects, both public and private.

The first public housing started in early 1954 after a disastrous fire swept through a squatter township at Shek Kip Mei in Kowloon, leaving 50,000 homeless. The government stepped in and just 53 days later the Public Works Department had constructed enough two-storey emergency quarters to house 35,000. By December 1954 the first of the now familiar resettlement blocks were completed and a huge public housing programme was under way.

Now and the Future

Today nearly two million people live in government subsidised accommodation in Hong Kong. More than 1.8 million live in the Housing Authority's 57 public