MARINE DEPAT W
households; for instance, additions and deletions of family members, and any factors such as overcrowding or under-occupation which may necessitate the transfer of the family concerned to a room of more appropriate size. Another side of the work is to encourage tenants to observe simple rules of hygiene. It is sometimes necessary to settle disputes, particularly between families which may have to share rooms. 62. Tenancy conditions have been mentioned in the preceding para- graph. These conditions are made as simple as possible, the most important being that the rent must be paid each month in advance on the rent day; that the tenant may not transfer his room to any other person or sublet any part of it; and that he must not allow his room to be used for any illegal purpose. Additional or special conditions are applied to shops and workshops, whilst restaurants, cafes and food shops have to comply with the conditions of an Urban Council licence.
63. If the conditions of the tenancy card are not observed, the staff give verbal warnings to be followed, if necessary, by preliminary and final warning letters. Usually these warnings are effective, but if no notice. is taken of the final written warning it may be necessary to terminate the tenancy and to require the tenant and his family to vacate the premises. 229 tenancies had to be terminated during the year; 93 for non-payment of rent; 6 for unauthorized transfers; 1 for an obstruction and 40 for miscellaneous reasons. The conditions of the tenancy card provide for cancellation as soon as the monthly rent is in arrears, but in fact relatively few tenancies are terminated for arrears of rent. Out of a total of over $30 million due in rents for the year under review only $4,571.00 (0.01%) had to be written off as irrecoverable arrears.
64. Apart from tenancy control, one of the major worries of the department is the relief of overcrowding. When rooms are allocated at a density approaching 24 square feet for each adult person in a house- hold (two children under the age of ten count as one adult) overcrowd- ing will obviously occur after a few years, taking into account the normal expansion of any family from births and the addition of close dependants. In Hong Kong, additions from the latter category are more numerous than they would be in most communities, since on their first arrival from the Chinese Mainland many families are split, wives, husbands or children having been left behind in their native place. These persons frequently arrive in Hong Kong years after the other members of their family, who by this time, through the operation of the clearance programme, may have become tenants in resettlement estates. The department can hardly refuse entry to these dependants
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