average in the Colony of the actual number of persons on each floor is 19; in the poorer class of tenements the average is considerably higher. It has been estimated that, apart from the natural increase in the population, and those squatters to whom reference is made below, to reduce the number of people living in tenements to the legal maximum some 350,000 people should be rehoused.
5. Living space is at a premium. It is not uncommon for a family of four-or more-to live in a bedspace, that is, a bunk bed with two or more tiers and the space it occupies. Such privacy as there is must be provided by curtains. Ventilation depends on the whims of the tenants with access to the windows. Water is scarce and has to be queued for; sanitary arrangements are insufficient; cooking facilities have to be shared by all. Disease flourishes and quarrels are frequent.
6.
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Those of the people who cannot afford even this class of accommodation have established themselves as squatters building themselves huts of whatever material is at hand and huddling together in insanitary colonies wherever there is space. The Resettlement Department has made considerable progress in ameliorating the conditions of these people, and a great many of them have now been resettled in decent, though necessarily austere, accommodation in properly laid out villages. These are temporary measures designed for the immediate relief of these unfortunate people; the main problem, for the squatters as well as for the tenement dwellers, remains of producing permanent accommodation of a good standard at rents within the means of the bulk of the population.
7. The core of the problem lies in the physical nature of the Colony. Hong Kong is mountainous and ground suitable for building is scarce. It has been said that the only way land can be made available is to cut the tops off the hills and dump them on reclamations of land from the sea. This process has been going on for some time, and quite a substantial area has been won in this way, but the inevitable result is that land is
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