An apartment in a resettlement block is a concrete-walled room, renting for $1.60 to $4.60 a month. The Hong Kong Housing Authority has built a higher-quality low-cost apartment in skyscraper developments, renting from $8 to $23 a month, and 106,000 persons are to be accommodated in them by 1964. Around 30,000 people live in flats built by the Hong Kong Housing Society, a voluntary group aided by government loan funds, and this number will be doubled in a few years. If the colony maintains its present rate of building, it can provide new apartments for 100,000 persons annually for the next five years. This small mountain of statistics looms large on the landscape until you consider that there are now about 500,000 to 600,000 people living in squatter shacks, on sidewalks and rooftops and in tumbledown firetrap tenements. Theoretically, they could all be rehoused in five or six years, but the colony’s population is rising meanwhile at the rate of 150,000 a year. The dreams of Hong Kong housing officials are haunted by figures; a baby born every five minutes and illegal immigrants sneaking across the border at an incalculable rate. Illegal immigration is never estimated at less than 10,000 a year and often set as high as 40,000. Popular guesswork may jack it up to 20,000 a month. In its own protection, the colony has been forced to forbid further immigration, except at an approximate rate of fifty a day. Its only shield against a smothering horde of advancing people is the effectiveness of its land and marine police. To the extent that the border police can restrain illegal immigration, the colony may be able to catch up with its housing needs, provided, of course, that the birth rate tapers off. The colony’s marine police are a small, well-trained force contending with overwhelming odds. Their fleet of 27 boats and 610 men is charged with patrolling 400 miles of coastline and 728 square miles of territorial waters. They have one 58-foot boat with a top speed of 22 knots and three jet boats of 20-foot length, useful in hot pursuit, with a maximum speed of 42 knots. Their 70-foot launches mount a 50-caliber Browning machine-gun on the foredeck and carry a cache of smaller arms, but they deliver no more than 11 knots. As many as five of the patrol boats may be out on duty at one time, but the sea lanes from Macao and China are crowded with ships at all hours. A police launch cruising along the western edge of Hong Kong waters on a clear day will often have forty vessels within its sight.