"The building programme is swinging into top gear with work going on in 11 housing estates to provide housing for over 200,000 people. On average, we are now letting each month a new major contract to build for 15,000 people; a further 16 projects are at an advanced planning stage, from which housing for 380,000 people will result. The latest date for completion of these projects is December, 1981, although many will be completed well
in advance of this date. From 1973-80,/housing for more than 820,000 people will have been provided.
new
"This rate of activity will be substantially increased
over the next 2-3 years until we reach our target in the mid- eighties. We would very much like to wave a magic wand to produce all the housing that is needed overnight, but I prefer to be able to tell you that, like in a jet-liner, we have successfully taken off, you may now smoke, relax your seatbelts, and we'll soon be cruising at 200,000 people a year.
"However, the production rate alone will not solve all the housing problems and we still must face many years before it can be said that every one has an adequate home, bearing in mind the requirement for increasing standards.
"In the second half of the fifties, when public housing was still in its infancy, and a big infant too, even in those days, old Mark I blocks with family rooms but with communal
washrooms and toilets were being built at a rate of one each week; while the former Housing Authority, was concerned with quality as well as qqantity and built the North Point Estate, in 1957, to provide two and three bed room flats, an estate which has always been popular.
"This more spacious standard was not maintained because
of the need to provide large numbers of separate flats and accommodation in subsequent Housing Authority estates had to be
planned at a somewhat arbitrary space standard of 35 sq. ft. per
person. As for the early resettlement blocks, because of the acute
shortage of housing, allocation was initially made at 24 sq. ft.per
person, gradually improving as later Marks were built, but only
reaching 35 sq. ft. per person with the provision of Mark V blocks.
13.