82. 248 similar granite cottages were built at Government expense at Ngau Tau Kok, making a total of 376 which have been built with the $400,000 voted by Government after the Shek Kip Mei fire. They are rented to settlers for $10 a month, in addition to which the usual quarterly site permit fee is payable.
The
83. Some critics of the living conditions in multi-storey estates point to the more attractive of the cottage areas and ask why all squatters cannot be resettled in a similar manner. answer is simple: Hong Kong has not the land to provide new housing for the many hundreds of thousands now living in slum conditions unless the great majority are housed in multi-storey buildings. There is the further point that although one-storey buildings are cheaper to build in terms of cost per square foot of floor space, there are other factors which make this form of resettlement expensive. Firstly, the capital cost of building the terraces, roads, paths, steps and drains is considerable. Tai Wo Hau, for example, the final cost of providing about 750 cottage sites will not be less than $800,000. Secondly, when these terraces, roads, paths, steps and drains have been con- structed they are expensive to maintain and protect against erosion and rainstorm damage.
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84. Other critics may therefore wonder why development of the cottage areas was not abandoned when the decision was taken in the summer of 1954 that multi-storey estates should be built by the Government for the resettlement of squatters. At that time the population of the cottage areas was about 50,000. If therefore one-storey development had then been stopped, over 20,000 persons would have been deprived of the housing they now enjoy and will probably continue to enjoy for many years. Even if it becomes necessary, as seems likely, to redevelop some of the more level sites now occupied by one- storey cottages and to move their inhabitants into multi-storey estates the effort and funds expended on the development of the cottage areas will not have been wasted. These areas have in fact made a valuable and distinctive contribution towards the solution of the squatter problem and are now providing cheap and sanitary housing for over 70,000 persons.
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