TNAG-0607-FCO40-755-Monitoring-progress-made-on-planning-papers-on-Hong-Kong-1977 — Page 145

(9) Housing

32

Construction programme

89.

I am glad to say that the housing programme is now in top

gear. 47 site formation piling and building contracts will be let

-

this financial year three times the number of last year. From

14,000 flats this year completions will rise to 20,000 next year and

to over 40,000 in 1979/80 with capacity for about 250,000 people.

This is the annual figure on which I have long had my eye.

It is only

at this sort of level that we can make the decisive and rapid inroads

into the housing problem for which we have worked and waited so long.

About five or six years of this rate of completion should break the

back of the problem as we have known it. Sites have, therefore, been

allocated, and every step for each estate in the long process from

site clearance to building completion has been planned and timed so

that this level of output can be maintained at least until 1984/85, and

so that any slippage in the programme can be detected early and rectified.

This is a prodigious amount of housing by any standards, and it will

certainly change Hong Kong, but I think we all agree that in this

respect Hong Kong needs changing.

/Finance and rents