346
}
figures of population are merely guess-work.
Broadly, the position is this. Owing to the fact that building operations were to a large extent suspended during the war, the natural increase of the population would have resulted in its outgrowing the available accommodation but in normal circumstances any shortage would have been only temporary and would long ago have been met by the construction of new houses. Unfortunate- -ly we have had to face very exceptional circumstances. The continuous disturbances in China have resulted in the influx
of enormous numbers of refugees who came here with the intention of remaining until their native provinces are fit for peaceable people to live in. This increase of
population would in any case result in competition for whatever accommodation exists and consequently in an increase of rents but the position is made far worse by the fact that numbers of these people are in possession of considerable
amounts of money, not infrequently the spoils of a period
of office, which they are prepared to devote to the purchase
of lands and houses at prices which are out of all proportion to the real value of the property (- This is the main cause
of the 'boom' in land-sales which has been so marked a
feature of the last two years -). They are able and anxious
to outbid the permanent residents of the Colony either in
purchase price or in rent and if it were not for the Rent
Restriction Ordinances a very large proportion of the latter
community would have been turned out of their dwellings,
leases for a term of years being rare exceptions in this Colony, without any possibility of finding alternative
accommodation. This applies to Europeans as well as to Chinese since in many parts of the Colony Chinese are encroaching on districts which were previously predominantly
European in character.
5.