Estates Select Committee which meets regularly once a month. The subjects with which this Committee deals are of a great variety and include evictions, heroin cases, applications from voluntary agencies for the allocation of rooftops or rooms, other matters connected with the health and welfare of the settlers, and the hundred and one problems which must arise when very large numbers of people have to live together at such close quarters. Secondly, each Member of the Council may, if he so wishes, become a Visiting Member to the estates and will then visit one section of about two blocks every month. This close personal contact between the Members of the Council and the multi- storey estates is of great assistance to the administrative staff.
68. On 31st March, 1959, there were 190,516 persons living in the 36,615 rooms and the 155 flats of the six- and seven-storey buildings in Shek Kip Mei, Li Cheng Uk, Tai Hang Tung, Hung Hom, Lo Fu Ngam, Wong Tai Sin and Chai Wan Estates and another 6,442 persons in the 914 rooms of the temporary Bowring Bungalows at Shek Kip Mei which have not yet been demolished. The total population is 196,958 persons, comprising 43,372 families and 3,035 single persons, the average family size being 4.81 persons (excluding single persons). Particulars of the population of the estates may be found at Appendix I at the end of this report.
CHAPTER V
THE COTTAGE AREAS
69. The fourteen cottage resettlement areas present a striking contrast to the uniformity of the multi-storey estates; most of these areas contain a wide variety of one-storey buildings built on a series of terraces on steep hillsides near the outskirts of the built-up areas of Hong Kong and Kowloon. The Government's capital expenditure in these areas is normally limited to the cost of the formation of the terraces, the building of roads, paths, drains and latrines, and the installation of public lighting and water standpipes. Once a cottage site has been formed and allocated it is left to the squatter himself or to a voluntary organization to build a hut or cottage. At first, the poorer settlers were able to do no more than rebuild their existing huts or build new wooden huts, though some settlers were able to employ a contractor to build a bungalow or to purchase one of the cottages built by private contractors between 1951 and 1954. Since then most of the available sites have been allocated to a number of charitable or
21