Stilt houses in Hong Kong is on the brink of extinction. They are defined as squatter in Hong Kong. According to Hong Kong ordinance, squatter owners do not have a right to own their property.

Their property appears only due to illegal occupation of the government land. Thus squatters area is a temporary housing area which will be cleared off by the government.

Stilt houses are concentrating along the river bank. Their original form is a fishing boat. As fishermen are living on the boat, the boat parking along the bank gradually becomes a shelter. Now we can see that stilt houses are supported by bamboo and concrete pillars which have plunged into the sea bed. You can imagine that the boat, the original form of the oldest stilt houses, were lifted up by several columns of bamboo. What amazing it is!

As the old stilt houses are small in size, fishermen had to build a bigger one beside the old one. They use tin plates, woods and concrete pilloars to construct a simple form of housing. The skin of stilt houses are coated with silver paint. Despite being simple in structure and form, the stilt houses look very clean and orderly because fishermen contantly maintains their housing. I suspect now that a good maintenance can transform a "temporary housing" into a historially unique housing area." If this is the case, urban decay in city is not an ordinary phenomenon or a univeral problem.

Silt houses can be very beautiful only if residents put differnt colors of plants along a balcony. In the above picture, we can see that some plants are put on the front area of the house and makes the house and even the whole area lively!