The stilt house residents were temporarily occupying the government land. According to the July 25 government press, the occupants have been granted a licence by the Building department. After the serious blaze, a part of stilt houses were burnt down. Some of stilt house occupants wanted to rebuild their house in-situ, instead of moving into the nearby public housing. Initially the government did not allow the occupants to rebuild. Later due to a strong protest from Tai O resident association, the government backed down and allowed the fire victims to rebuilt, but without any financial support. In this case, the Building Department was responsible for reissuing a year-long licence to stilt house occupants. Nevetheless, when the government successfully formulate a long-term development policy of Tai O, she could take back the land by giving three months notice to residents. Thus stilt house occupants do not have a ownership right of their houses and hereby the houses are only temporary.

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!