PERSONAL &
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Feb 20 Extracted
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ARRA/15
6.
many decades but whose standards we nevertheless seek to emulate in a much shorter time and for greater proportionate numbers.
Turning now to housing, I can only say at once that it needs no further study, over and above the continuous study we give to housing matters, to know that a further crash building programme is, regrettably, out of the question.
It must first be pointed out that our efforts in the housing field since 1954 have constituted a crash programme by any standards already, and have continuously been operated as such. To-day, over 40% of the entire population are tenants of Government-aided dwellings; by 1975, under the present programme, figure may rise to 50%; and the whole programme has been financed from current revenue with only the most minimal outside help.
this
Next, the squatter clearance programme, based on compulsion, upon which we have been engaged for some 16 years, has not of course had as its purpose purely the clearing and rehousing of squatters: still less has there ever been an accepted doctrine that all squatters must be compulsorily cleared and resettled. Clearances have primarily been undertaken partly to free land for the provision of such urgent needs as roads, schools and hospitals and partly to remove fire risk, health risk and squalor. In the pursuance of these objectives, the priority of which inter se has varied from time to time, squatter resettlement has so far pre- empted a very large share of the overall Government- aided housing programme.
It is against this background that we must look at the situation today. Much of the most needed land which had to be recovered from illegal occupation has already been recovered, squatter fires on the scale experienced in the 1950's could not take place today, and conditions in the remaining squatter areas, which tend
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