ABSTRACT
The extent of Hong Kong's housing problem is formidable indeed. On the basis of the 1961 census it has been estimated that out of the population of approximately 3,133,000 about 1,000,000 are unsatisfactorily housed, about 511,000 in squatter huts and other wooden structures, 140,000 in bed-spaces, 69,000 in verandas and cocklofts, 56,000 on rooftops, 5°,000 in shops, garages and staircases, 2.6,000 in boats, 2.0,000 on the streets, 12.,000 in basements, and 10,000 in stalls and caves. l
By far the most spectacular housing effort in Hong Kong is that of the Government Resettlement Department. The origin of resettlement was in the days of the previous mass influx of refugees from China, when squatters flooded the central areas of Kowloon and Victoria. This mass squatting not only caused enormous fire hazards, but also made impossible any development of not yet built-up land. Government therefore decided to provide with cheap accommodation all those whose structures were being demolished for development purposes. As most of these squatters were then of the lowest income groups-penniless refugees, unskilled or unemployed-the principle was accepted of the lowest possible rent to cover capital expenditure over a considerable time-forty years in the case of the big blocks. In the first period of the emergency, government built huts, but in 1953, when 50,000 squatters were made homeless overnight by a disastrous fire, the new Resettlement Department decided to exploit the scarce land more fully and began to build the by now familiar six-storey blocks. These are solid concrete, built to last. In the beginning of the scheme there existed a plan to improve the accommodation in these blocks by removing partitions between pairs of 'units', thus providing small self-contained flats for families. Today, when there are nearly half a million people living in these blocks, such a change seems near-impossible as it would require the building of new accommodation for a quarter of a million already 'resettled' people.
