CONFIDENTIAL
7.
to be in the outskirts of the city, do not compare, in terms of squalor and health risk, with those that formed the main targets for the massive clearances of the past. (In this connection, I sometimes wonder if we would find these huts quite such an offence to our senses if they were the traditional leaf-and-bamboo huts of East Asian villages. Picturesqueness however is not a measure of good housing: and a traditional leaf hut can in fact be an even more squalid form of shelter than a reasonably well constructed tin one).
Conditions in the city's tenements on the other hand are in many cases far worse than in squatter areas. Housing conditions for tenement dwellers, and of course for eligible squatters in areas which do not need to be forcibly cleared, can be best improved through our orthodox low-cost public housing systems, under which those in the greatest need can be deliberately selected on a rational basis for re-housing by contrast with the squatter clearance programme in which, since it is an enforced clearance, all who live in the area to be cleared must be offered subsidised accommodation without reference to their individual means (they are not all poor by any means), or their degree of need, or even their own wishes.
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In short, the present situation as we see it, so far from calling for a ror crash programme to resettle the remaining squatters, probably calls for a change in emphasis away fro..."quatter resettlement and towards more orthodox low-cost housing; and, indeed, very possibly calls for an absolute reduction in the overall volume of Government-aided housing to be produced over the next few years.
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