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LAND AND HOUSING
public inspection in 1970. In the meantime funds have been voted to enable Government to acquire sites which are considered essential to prevent further deterioration of the environment and to provide space for essential community facilities.
RESETTLEMENT
Hong Kong's resettlement estates have attracted world-wide attention. Hundreds of thousands of people are being provided with homes by a building programme which, for speed and size, has few, if any, parallels. By the end of 1969 the Hong Kong Government had become, through this programme, the landlord of about 1,128,697 people or 28.2 per cent of the population.
The resettlement building programme is reviewed annually by the Housing Board to ensure that the needs of resettlement are balanced with those of other types of housing. The Government has accepted as a working basis the board's recommendations in its report for 1967-8. These include a recommendation that the balance between the resettlement and government low-cost building programmes should be adjusted to allow 425,000 individual units of resettlement accommodation and 410,000 units of government low-cost housing to be built between April 1, 1968 and March 31, 1974. This recommendation reflects the Government's policy of gradually shifting the emphasis of its housing programme from resettlement to government low-cost housing.
In 1964 the original 7-storey resettlement block design in- troduced in 1954 was abandoned in favour of a new design. The new blocks were first of eight storeys and then of sixteen. They differ fundamentally from the older ones in that access is from a central corridor on each floor instead of from external common balconies. This makes it possible to give each room a private balcony. Other improvements include refuse chutes, the installation of electrical power and light points in domestic rooms (which had been the tenant's responsibility in the older designs), lifts in the 16-storey blocks and private lavatories and water taps in place of the former communal latrines and wash-houses. The latest design is being built to a larger room-grid to give effect to a Housing Board recommendation that families should be allocated 35 square feet of space for each adult on occupation. By the end of 1969, the