TNAG-0280-FCO40-316-Visit-of-Parliamentary-under-Secretary-of-Foreign-and-Common-1970 — Page 22

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2.

undertaken partly to free land for the provision of such

urgent needs as roads, schools and hospitals and partly to

remove fire risk, health risk and squalor. In the

pursuance of these objectives, the priority of which inter se has varied from time to time, squatter resettlement has

so far pre-empted a very large share of the overall Govern- ment-aided housing programme.

4. It is against this background that we must look at

the situation today. Much of the most needed land which

had to be recovered from illegal occupation has already been

recovered, squatter fires on the scale experience in the

1950s could not take place today, and conditions in the

remaining squatter areas, which tend to be in the cutskirts

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 cne.)

5. 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. 6.

In short, the present situation as we see it, so far

from calling for a further crash programme to resettle the

remaining squatters, probably calls for a change in emphasis

/away

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