TNAG-0317-FCO40-353-Policy-of-housing-and-resettlement-in-Hong-Kong-problem-of-s-1971 — Page 180

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planning periods, with a generalized look forward to 10 years.

Each year, based on Housing Board recommendations, an estimate is made of the housing to be provided during the ensuing 6 years within the various sectors I have categorized above, with some projection forward into the following 4 years. Detailed planning to fulfil housing needs are based on these estimates, which are themselves based on the views of the Board on the optimum distribution between sectors and the actual capacity of the Public Works Department, the real estate industry, and the building industry to produce housing. The 6-year period is based on the average sort of time taken to produce housing estates from scratch: taking into account the time taken to select the land, register the entitlements of squatters for resettlement, clear them, form sites (often as or more difficult a task than actual building), provide roads and main services, design, and, eventually, to build the estates and move families in.

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Finally, it must be emphasized that not all squatters are poor, or that they are badly housed in their huts, or that they are anxious to move. Many are happy as they are - a fact which has particular relevance to squatters on land not needed for development. To clear them forcibly (by which I mean that physical force or the threat of it not infrequently must be used) may be justifiable when their clearance is necessary in the broader public interest to make way for, say, a school or a clinic: but it is far less justifiable when there is no public interest in getting them cleared, as would be the case when squatters were on land not needed for development.

I turn now to the latest recommendations of the Housing Board, which I

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