depths, and several ground floors had to be temporarily evacuated. No serious structural damage occurred, but the fresh water supply was cut off for some days, as was all access by road. Once he was able to bring in earth moving equipment, the department's maintenance contractor did an excellent job in restoring conditions within the estate to normal. Extensive work was required to restore adjacent hill slopes and improve the surface and underground storm-water drainage. The Public Works Department undertook this work which was approaching completion at the end of the year.
108. Information about rents is given in Chapter 9 and Appendix 4, and the figures of authorized population in the different Marks of block are shown in Appendix 5, already referred to. The principal duties of the estate staff include ensuring that rents are paid and that the condi- tions of tenancy are observed. It is, unhappily, the continual checking which these duties involve that make the most impression on some of the tenants. On their rounds, Resettlement Assistants have to watch out for any changes in the composition of individual households, whether by increase or decrease, and for any consequential overcrowding or under- occupation which policy directives require should be met by offering to transfer the family concerned to a room more appropriate to its size. The tenancy conditions are not onerous or unreasonable, the most im- portant being that the rent be paid each month in advance on a set day, that the room may not be transferred or sublet, that it may not be used for any illegal purpose, and that no structural alterations may be made without prior approval. Shops and workshops have to comply with a number of additional special conditions, while restaurants, cafes, fresh food shops and workshops are also bound by the conditions of the appropriate Urban Council or other licence.
109. In most systems of public housing, the breach of a condition of tenancy may be followed, although it may be after a long process, by eviction. In Hong Kong's resettlement estates, the practice is for the staff first to give a verbal warning. When necessary, this is followed by preliminary and then by final warning letters. Experience has shown that most such warnings are effective, but if no notice is in fact taken of final warning the competent authority has to consider whether the tenancy should be terminated and the tenant with his family required to quit. Last year 445 tenancies were terminated, of which 317 were for non-payment of rent; 28 for unauthorized transfers concealed under the guise of equally unauthorized subletting; 1 for creating a deliberate
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