Got into a heated discussion with a coworker over this. My stance is it was probably for the best it was demolished. The entire thing was a massive fire and disease hazard. Massive amounts of crime and unlicensed businesses too. Despite its reputation for a kind of tight knit anarchist type community, most of the stuff I've read seems to suggest triads and the HK police were largely running the place.
I hate forceful eviction as much as the next person here. What else could have been done? There was some compensation given to the residents, but I know some residents complained it wasn't enough.
My coworker's stance is the place should have remained as it was, without any sort of intervention whatsoever, despite being so hazardous.
How do y'all feel?
And evictions can be easily rendered trivial if you move people to new housing. The damage from eviction is mainly from the cost and not having a place to live afterwards. That all can be addressed pretty easily.
I wouldn't say trivial, moving can be very disruptive, especially if it's forced and even more so if your place of work is also being destroyed (as was the case for many people living and working there). Still, it was just a matter of when, not if, that place was going to go up in flames and killed thousands of people. Think the Oakland Ghost Ship warehouse fire times a thousand.
It makes me so angry all those people died. The fire inspectors were all over that warehouse and they knew what was going on and it was unsafe. But nooo...if the government shut the place down that's faaaaaascism. There would have been a riot in Oakland, because that's how they roll there. And so dozens of people died in a fire.
And who got the blame? The government fire inspectors, for not shutting it down and allowing an obviously unsafe building to continue hosting crowds of people. So, so angry.