HOUSING, RESETTLEMENT AND TOWN PLANNING
3 blocks of staff quarters, 2 blocks of working class flats, 5 club buildings, 11 offices, 64 godowns and stores, I hostel, I clinic, I distillery, I temple, I mosque and 1 Jockey Club grandstand. There were also 3,803 plans. covering rehabilitation, alterations and additions mostly to domestic property: 51 site development schemes and a large number of plans covering minor construc- tional work, such as garages and temporary buildings. A total of 1,214 new buildings comprising 498 European type and 484 Chinese type dwellings and 232 other structures was completed.
The new Draft Building Ordinance and Regula- tions are still under consideration and it is hoped that they will be adopted early next year. It was agreed that the Buildings Ordinance should apply to the Tsun Wan District of the New Territories when suitable staff had been recruited.
Resettlement
The year 1954 was the busiest year ever for resettle- ment work. On Christmas day 1953, 58,000 persons had lost their homes in the great Shek Kip Mei fire and the problem of rehousing this multitude had to be faced as the new year began. As the year proceeded there were five large squatter fires and a number of small ones; these together destroyed the homes of an additional 42,000 persons so that, during the period 25th December, 1953-25th December, 1954, out of the whole urban population about one person in every 20 lost his home in a squatter fire.
These unhappy developments had two important results. First, they transformed the squatter problem from a stubborn and apparently endemic evil into an
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