HOUSING
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of enabling them to continue to practise the great variety of trades and occupations which are to be found in the squatter areas. For this reason most of the ground-floor rooms in multi-storey resettlement estates are now being allocated for business purposes, including all kinds of shops, restaurants, cafes and many different types of workshop. Such businesses normally occupy a complete bay of 240 sq. ft., at a rental of $100 a month.
There are, however, a number of industries which cannot be allowed in domestic buildings, and it has, therefore, been decided to construct a large five-storey factory building at Cheung Sha Wan, in the north-western part of Kowloon, to accommodate squatter factories and workshops. This building will contain 95,000 sq. ft. of floor space and will be suitable for a wide range of factories and workshops not requiring large areas of open ground. This pilot project will be com- pleted by mid-summer 1957.
More welfare centres have been built in the cottage areas where it is still possible to allocate sites for such purposes. In the multi-storey estates, where no sites can be made available, the practice is to allocate large roof-tops with penthouses at either end, together with a certain number of normal rooms, to welfare organizations willing to conduct boys' and girls' clubs under the supervision of the Social Welfare Office. The Education Department has also recently agreed that the penthouses on these roof-tops may be used for school pur- poses, and it is hoped that the present figure of three schools will soon be considerably increased.
Squatter fires have been less frequent and smaller than in previous years, and the total number made homeless by such fires was under 6,000, as compared with over 14,000 in the previous year.
Squatter prevention teams have had a busy year, probably owing to the large influx of persons from China during the period when immigration restrictions were relaxed. During that period there was a great increase in the number of huts on the roof-tops of privately owned tenement buildings,