LAND AND HOUSING
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community centres and, in the latest ones, the tendency is to con- centrate ancillary services into separate buildings for welfare services, restaurants and administration.
Provision is also made for the small factories which are often found in squatter areas or in areas under annual Crown land permits. To enable the operators of these factories to continue earning a livelihood when these areas are cleared for permanent development, multi-storey resettlement factory blocks have been built. Because of the need to use a simple design in order to keep construction costs, and therefore rents, as low as possible, a number of trades cannot be accommodated in the multi-storey factory blocks and consequently some factories can be resettled only if the owners are willing to change their trades.
The first factory blocks, dating from 1957, were five storeys high and provided industrial working space in units of 198 square feet. A later version has units of 256 square feet, an arrangement repeated in the latest blocks of seven storeys. At the end of the year there were 22 resettlement flatted factory blocks, containing a total of 1,860,000 square feet of net working space, mostly situated in or near existing resettlement estates. Rents are calculated to cover administration costs and a return on capital within 21 years at five per cent per annum compound interest. These rents vary from 38 cents a square foot a month for a ground floor unit to 23 cents for one on the top floor in the older factories, and from 55 cents, on the ground floor, to 25 cents on the top floor in the new factories. All rents are inclusive of rates. In administering these factory ten- ancies, the Resettlement Department checks machinery and electri- cal and floor loading. There is liaison with the Labour and Fire Services Departments to secure satisfactory working conditions and safety from fire and other hazards.
There still remain 15 cottage resettlement areas in various parts of the urban area and the New Territories; a new cottage area, at Fo Tan in the New Territories, was occupied during the year. The population of these areas has diminished as clearance for development continues and the occupants are resettled in multi- storey estates. However, cottage areas still house 68,000 people. Several of these areas contain many small factories, shops and workshops, together with schools, clinics and welfare centres of