long-term problem. It was not a question of planning, but rather of fundamental thinking and doctrine. The planning would come at the next stage.
33. The Council was already on record as saying positively that the squatter problem could not be solved except by the construction of emergency multi-storey accommodation on a large scale. It remained to be determined how far such a programme could in fact succeed-in other words whether the problem could really be solved at all. Questions of building and design will be dealt with in the next chapter and it suffices at this stage to recall that Government had authorized the carrying out at Shek Kip Mei of an experiment in multi-storey resettle- ment. In the light of the results of that experiment it was to be decided whether large-scale multi-storey construction should be authorized. During the last three months of 1954 the eight six-storey buildings at Shek Kip Mei were completed and occupied, and the construction of eight more buildings, each of seven-storeys, was authorized on the site of the Tai Hang Tung fire. This was not high-grade housing.
housing. It was emergency accommodation built to meet a grave emergency. A family of five adults was housed in one room measuring 120 square feet and smaller families were required to share a room. Thirty or forty such rooms shared one communal water tap and three communal flush latrines. The decision to accept this type of sub-standard housing as the answer to the overall squatter problem was not lightly taken. The main arguments which led the Urban Council and the Government to conclude that these multi-storey buildings should be built on a large scale were as follows:--first, it would bring to working class people, for the first time since the war, fire-proof and weather-proof housing, within reach of the main centres of employment, at a rent bearing a reasonable relation to their earnings; second, the revenue accruing from rents would represent a reasonable return on the capital expenditure from public funds; third, the buildings were so designed that each pair of rooms could at a future date be converted into one self-contained flat; fourth and most important, there was no alternative except to do nothing and await the fires which would inevitably take place, leaving
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