On Christmas Day 1953, a huge fire swept the Shek Kip Mei squatter area and made some 50 000 people homeless. To rehouse squatter residents, the first batch of eight blocks of six-storey resettlement buildings were completed in Shek Kip Mei at the end of 1954 which marked the beginning of Hong Kong’s public housing development. In 1954, the Resettlement Department was established to manage the multi-storey resettlement estates arising from the fire in Shek Kip Mei in 1953. In April 1954, the Hong Kong Housing Authority was established. It was tasked to provide housing units of a better quality at a lower rent for “the low-paid among the white-collar class”. In 1964, the Government released the white paper, “Review of Policies for Squatter Control, Resettlement and Government Low-cost Housing”, which decided to accelerate the construction of resettlement and low-cost housing, develop large-scale resettlement estates and build taller buildings in order to meet the huge demand for housing.