The Shek Kip Mei fire ( Chinese : 石硤尾大火 ) took place in Hong Kong on 25 December 1953. It destroyed the Shek Kip Mei shanty town of immigrants from mainland China who had fled to Hong Kong, leaving over 53,000 people homeless.
6-416: The area that was destroyed by the fire is bounded by Boundary St. and Tai Po Rd. After the fire, the governor Alexander Grantham launched a public housing programme to introduce the idea of "multi-storey building" for the immigrant population living there. The standardised new structures offered fire- and flood-resistant construction to previously vulnerable hut dwellers. The programme involved demolishing
12-844: A short period in 1933. In 1934, he was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple and attended the Imperial Defence College later that year. Grantham became Colonial Secretary of Bermuda from 1935 to 1938, and of Jamaica from 1938 to 1941. He then served as Chief Secretary of Nigeria from 1941 to 1944 and as Governor of Fiji and High Commissioner for the Western Pacific from 1945 to 1947. Immediately after his tenure as High Commissioner ended, he became Governor of Hong Kong , until 1957. He opposed his predecessor, Sir Mark Young 's proposal of expanding social services on
18-741: The grounds that the local Chinese population cared little about social welfare. Instead, he proposed the election of Unofficial members of the Legislative Council among British subjects only with the Governor holding reserved power to override LegCo decisions. His tenure marked the beginning of a unitary housing policy by the Hong Kong Government. In December 1953, a fire burned down a large slum area in Shek Kip Mei , Kowloon, killing nine and leaving many homeless. It
24-576: The rest of the makeshift houses left untouched by the fire, and the construction of the Shek Kip Mei Low-cost Housing Estate in their stead. Alongside a huge volunteer effort, the council spent nearly HK$ 16 million in relief work . This Hong Kong –related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Alexander Grantham Sir Alexander William George Herder Grantham , GCMG ( Chinese : 葛量洪 ; 15 March 1899 – 4 October 1978)
30-756: Was a British colonial administrator who governed Hong Kong and Fiji . Grantham was born on 15 March 1899 and was educated at Wellington , the Royal Military College, Sandhurst , and Pembroke College, Cambridge . He was gazetted in the 18th Hussars in 1917 and joined the Colonial Administrative Service in Hong Kong in 1922. He was the Deputy Clerk of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong for
36-788: Was under Grantham's administration that the government began to build settlement houses for the homeless. From that point on, the government was deeply involved in low-cost public housing programmes that allowed many Hong Kong people who could not afford to own a flat to live in government-owned housing estates at relatively low cost. The housing programme eventually evolved over time to allow people to buy low-cost housing and receive favourable loans to buy their own houses. Grantham grew up partly in Tianjin , where his father practised law. Both his father and brother were killed in World War I . His mother then remarried, to Johan Wilhelm Normann Munthe , and
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