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PART I.
Preliminary.
1. The first meeting of the Commission was held on 9th March, 1938. It was then decided that a notice should be inserted in the columns of the local press, both English and Chinese, inviting landlords and tenants to submit in writing any facts relative to our terms of reference which they might wish to bring to our notice, and intimating that we would request the writers of such statements as might appear helpful or relevant, to appear before us at the Urban Council Chamber and give oral testimony at such time and on such date as might be notified. A similar notice was posted at all Police Stations in Victoria and Kowloon.
2. It was apparent that a considerable portion of our investigations would cover matters of a confidential nature, and we thought it right that our meetings should not be open to the public. We inserted in the press notice referred to in the preceding paragraph, a statement that all communications would be treated as confidential, if desired.
3. We decided to commence sitting to examine statements and receive evidence on the 14th March, 1938, at the Urban Council Chamber, and thereafter to sit daily to hear evidence from 9.30 a.m. to 1 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays excepted. The Urban Council Chamber was not always available in the afternoon, and it was considered necessary to devote afternoons and the whole of each Saturday to the task, which in the event proved a large one, of translating, considering and classifying documents and typing the notes of evidence taken. It proved essential, however, to hold additional hearings on the afternoons of the 15th and 23rd March, 1938, and on the morning and afternoon of Saturday, the 26th March, 1938.
4. A certain number of letters addressed to His Excellency the Governor and the Honourable Colonial Secretary were forwarded to us by the latter and considered at our first meeting. Over forty letters addressed to the Hon. Mr. R. H. Kotewall, C.M.G., LL.D., as a result of a notice inserted by him in the Chinese press, were also received and considered at the same time.
5. In addition to the letters mentioned in the foregoing paragraph, 216 com- munications in both English and Chinese were received between the 14th and 24th March, 1938. Of these communications 30 were from landlords and 186 from tenants. A number of the latter were from groups of tenants. Many complaints related to shops and business premises, but we ignored such complaints unless the proprietor was actually resident in the premises. The great majority of complaints alleged merely an increase of rent. Between 40 and 50 concerned bare notices to quit.
6. We were no less impressed by the gravity and difficulty of the task assigned to us than were the Housing Commission appointed in the year 1923 (Sessional Paper No. 10 of 1923, Paragraph 3), and we could have wished to follow that Commission in taking "ample time to prosecute our investigations" (ibid.), but in view of the alleged urgency of the position, and of our Chairman's pending departure from the Colony, we deemed it right to aim at completing this Report before the end of the month in which we were appointed. Nevertheless, we wish to lay stress on the necessarily hasty nature of our inquiry, and to point out that a complete review of the situation supported by full statistics would take many weeks to prepare.
7. We concluded that the best method to obtain a rapid and yet substantially accurate picture of the situation was, after considering as carefully as time permitted the whole of the documents collected, to take selected cases of apparent genuine hardship from various types of house property in different districts of the areas to which our terms of reference were confined, and accordingly we heard oral evidence in 54 cases.
It appeared that there was a considerable misapprehension of the
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