XX
REPORT FROM THE LAND COMMISSION OF 1886-87.
Resumed Lots paying no rent, but the rentals of which are now being adjusted for payment :-
Inland Lot, No. 51,....
No. 136,
No. 134,
12
No. 135,
No. 139,
15
·
Total annual rental for 1886,.
>>
>>
1882,......
..$
492.70
287.35
208.98
240.33
3.06
1,232.42
159,520.66
$160,753.08
$148,450.87
Increase in 4 Years $ 12,302.21
The total number of acres held under leases, (excluding encroachments which are not ascertained), was on the same day, (25th December, 1886), 1,118.
The houses which have been built on these lots, and upon which rates have been paid for 1886,
are :-
In Victoria,
In Kowloon,
In the Villages (including the Peak),
Total,
7,318
.1,161
.1,512
.9,991
The estimate of the population living in these houses at the end of the year 1886, amounts to 157,400, being an average of 18 people for each house in Victoria, 13 for each house at Kowloon and 7 for each house in the Hongkong Villages, but the Commissioners have reason to believe that the numbers are greatly under-estimated.
There are also a large number of houses and dwellings erected by squatters and on a few of the leased lots, and also a very large floating population which pay no rates, and these are not included in the above.
DIVISION OF THE LOTS INTO SECTIONS AND SUB-SECTIONS AND
TITLES TO LAND.
Owing probably to the objections raised by the Governor, and the Attorney General, in 1849, before referred to, while it was considered advisable to allow transfers of sections and sub-sections of lots to be registered it was apparently considered desirable to keep the original holder, or his assignee who was owner of the Remaining Portion of the Lot, responsible for the whole of the Crown Rent.
Great difficulties have arisen in consequence, the lots have been built upon to the extent of many houses upon one lot, all owned by different people, as section holders, sub-section or section of sub- section holders; in great numbers of cases no proportion of Crown Rent was allotted on the first carving out of the sections, and consequently none on the carving out of the sub-sections or sections of sub-sections. Streets have been made over and across several lots disregarding the line of boundaries of the lots as sold and held upon lease, and very many houses have been built along the line of street frontage so that the front part of the house is on one lot, the middle of the house on another and the rear upon another, and the owner of one house would properly speaking have to pay proportions of Crown Rent to the owners of the Remaining Portions of three different lots. In very
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