gency meeting of all the Sub-departments was called to discuss ways and means of rehousing these people in the shortest possible time.
113. Single-storey development was first considered, since this would have allowed the maximum use of prefabricated units, but it was found that, by this method, less than a third of the people made homeless could be rehoused on the site. Multi-storey blocks, which would have allowed considerably more accommodation to be provided on the same site area, could not be considered in the early stages, since it would have taken at least 5 months before any accommodation could be completed, and there were over 20,000 persons sleeping on the streets of Kowloon.
114. A compromise solution was therefore agreed, in which the first 6,200 rooms would be constructed in two-storey blocks and 3,072 rooms would be constructed in six-storey reinforced concrete blocks.
115. The first problem was the design and construction of the two-storey blocks. Large quantities of materials of various kinds were required immediately to carry out this project, and it was therefore essential that these materials should either be readily available in the Colony or obtainable quickly from Far East sources. It was found that there would be no difficulty in obtaining concrete products, corrugated asbestos cement sheeting and timber.
116. A design was prepared for two-storey blocks of back-to-back rooms, with external verandahs on both sides to give access to the upper rooms, and open staircases at the ends of the blocks. The construction consists of concrete strip foundations, hollow concrete block walls, in situ reinforced concrete verandahs, precast reinforced concrete hollow floor slabs for the upper floors, corrugated asbestos cement roofing on timber purlins and ledged and braced timber shutters. The concrete blocks were specially designed to provide proper bonding at the intersections and around the window and door openings, in order to eliminate waste in cutting the blocks and
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