- 2.
to decide how to allocate the remaining building capacity between relieving the overcrowding in our older estates, where conditions may be poorer than in some squatter areas, housing poor families from pre-war tenement slums and resettling the occupants of the squatter areas. Finding a balance between these requirements is not easy, because, although the resettlement and Low Cost Housing programme over the next six years should provide 560,000 units, it will not be enough to relieve the situation entirely. Out of this total it is provisionally thought that 180,000 spaces will be provided for relieving overcrowding in existing resettlement estates and 30,000 spaces for clearing the most squalid of the squatter areas, as well as 100,000 spaces for squatters cleared from land required for development.
4.
Meanwhile as new estates have been built standards have steadily improved and the latest type of block (the Mark VI) is based on the W.H.O. living space standard of 35 square feet per person. Individual lavatories are provided for each room, and lifts are installed in all the blocks. The next generation of resettlement blocks will be even further improved and will be identical with the standard Government low-cost housing blocks, with wider rooms, louvred windows in place of the wooden shutters provided up to the present, and some internal decoration. It is also the intention wherever practicable i.e. where sufficient land is available, to improve the layout and general amenities and facilities.
5.
The writer of the letter refers to a total of 802,000 squatters (including boat squatters) still to be rehoused. He quotes no authority for these figures; the highest figure which has usually been quoted in the past is 500,000, while the latest report of the Housing Board estimates the number of squatters on land at 410,000, to which may be added about 22,000 boat squatters. These figures were not based on a headcount and the recently completed census reveals that even the Housing Board estimates are significantly over-stated and that the number of land squatters in the urban areas (including Tsuen Wan and Kwai Chung) is only about 187,000. In the course of the next six years 100,000 squatters will be cleared from land required for development, which together with the 30,000 to be cleared from the most squalid squatter areas, will substantially reduce the overall number.
6.
To divert more of our development effort to housing than is at present provided in our forward programmes would lead to disproportion and wrong emphasis: it is just as important, if not more important, to make progress with providing the infra structure for industry (on which everything else depends) housing development, the road network, the port and the airport, the water supplies, and, indeed, the reclamation of land from the sea on which to build the housing estates. All these things have to be kept in balance.
7.
Nothing has been said here about the role of the private developer but the upsurge in development of new property and redevelopment of pre-war tenements is also encouraging.
8.
In short, the Government and Government-aided housing programmes are on a considerable scale and, by improving standards in new estates, by providing for the relief of overcrowding in the older estates and by planning for the redevelopment of the oldest we are putting the correct
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