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3.
It would appear that the effect of the various efforts of the Community Development Project at this estate have resulted in tenants adopting a less responsible attitude to rent payment. During the course of the dispute it has been necessary to publicise the fact that the Authority will not terminate a tenancy where tenant is clearly unable to pay, and there are clear indications that this fact is being exploited. It is also clear that the normally good landlord-tenant relationship between the Authority and its tenants
is suffering damage which may take a long time to repair.
(iii) Hing Wah Estaté II
..
The attempts to organize a protest on this estate
you have not been very successful and Members will be aware of the publicity that arose out of it. The action started when a meeting was held within the estate by the Director of the Ecumenical Project referred to above. Posters and leaflets were issued within the estate calling tenants to join in the protest. It is not difficult to persuade people that they are paying too much in rent, and some tenants on Hing Wah Estate were assured that they would obtain a lower rent if they protested, but that rents would be increased if they did not. In spite of the assistance from other so-called social workers, evidently Hong Kong University undergraduates, only nine people accompanied by four children, went to Government House to hand in a letter.
Later, two tenants, one of whom had taken part in the Government House petition, came to the Housing Authority Headquarters to report that their rents were too high. Of these two, one had a family of sixteen and a total rent of $655 per month for the three flats she occupied, but had previously told the Department that her total family income was $5,370. The other petitioner with a family of six paid $255 per month in rent for her flat, compared with a declared income of $4,000 per month.
The above is the state-of-play at mid-March. It would seem that this campaign is "bogged down" and given no further impetus will die out. The greatest damage having been done at Kwai Shing Estate.
DIM/ah
Пазне
(D.I. McIntosh)
Assistant Director, West
t