184
HONG KONG ANNUAL REPORT
and 8,350 persons were resettled at Wong Tai Sin and Jordan Valley Estates.
For the squatters remaining the weather during the year con- siderably increased the hazards of fire or of flood and landslide. In the violent rains of June, 41 squatters were killed by landslides and falling boulders and 3,860 were made homeless. By contrast the extremely dry weather during the last three months of the year facilitated the outbreak and spread of squatter fires. One fire, at Lo Fu Ngam, made 2,602 people homeless and while the rest were of less severity they destroyed the homes of 7,224 squatters in all during the year. It is not normally possible to offer immediate resettlement to the victims of these disasters but, wherever possible, alternative sites are allocated on which they can build themselves new huts, either in the same area or on any suitable Crown Land that may be available in the vicinity. Where this is not possible sites are laid out in the public streets where they can build temporary huts to live in until they can be resettled. During the year 1,022 victims of earlier disasters were resettled from these street huts.
The administration of large multi-storey estates presents special problems, partly because of their size and partly because of the poor circumstances of the inhabitants, many of whom are not in regular employment. Resettlement has, however, solved the housing problem for these people, and there is no doubt that the majority realize that they are better housed than most of the families in normal tenement buildings in the Colony and appreci- ate what is being done for them. One indication of this is the fact that, out of a total of $8,224,038.00 due as rents of rooms in 1959, only $4,865 had to be written off as irrecoverable arrears. Every assistance is given to any voluntary organization willing to carry out welfare work in resettlement estates or cottage areas. In the cottage areas, sites are granted on permit to such organi- zations. In the multi-storey estates, where no sites can be made available, the roof-tops of the estate blocks, which have pent- houses at either end, are allocated to charitable organizations for use as boys' and girls' clubs, under the supervision of the Social Welfare Department, or as schools, under the supervision of the Education Department. In addition, a modification in the design of new estate blocks constructed during the year, providing a