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LAND AND HOUSING
During 1968 the Building Authority declared 209 buildings dangerous, obtained closure orders by application to a Magistrate and ordered demolition of the buildings. In 49 cases it was necessary for the Building Authority to arrange contracts and supervise demolition, in default of compliance by the owners with the statutory orders to demolish. As a result of these operations, a total of 8,959 persons were evicted from their homes and places of business.
RESETTLEMENT
Hong Kong's resettlement estates have attracted world-wide attention. Hundreds of thousands of people are being provided with homes by a low-cost housing programme which, for speed and size, has few, if any, parallels. By the end of 1968 the Hong Kong Government had become, through this programme, the landlord of about 1,092,500 people or over a quarter of the popula- tion. Present building plans aim at accommodating about 1.6 million by 1972. The programme is reviewed annually by the Housing Board to ensure that the needs of resettlement are balanced with those of other types of housing.
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The Government has accepted as a working basis the board's recommendations in its report for 1966–7. These, in brief, are that the balance between the resettlement and government low-cost building programmes should be adjusted to allow 650,000 individual units of resettlement accommodation and 350,000 units of govern- ment low-cost housing to be built between April 1, 1966 and March 31, 1972, and that a new type of resettlement block should be designed to increase the space standard on first allocation from a minimum of 24 square feet to 35 square feet for an occupant over the age of ten. The board's report for 1967-8 was still under consideration at the end of the year.
When the Resettlement Department was formed in 1954, the earliest type of multi-storey accommodation built was in the form of 'H' shaped blocks with communal washing and latrine facilities on each of the seven floors. Back-to-back individual rooms, acces- sible by communal balconies surrounding each floor, varied in size from 86 square feet to 152 square feet, with the majority 120 square feet and designed to house a family of four or five adults.