Sessional_Paper_1939 — Page 154

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to erect a cockloft over part of the floor. Such a flat might be likened to a pigeon hole with an open verandah, windows between the verandah and the flat proper and the other end blocked by a kitchen but with a window in the corner over a covered yard. It is frequently let to a principal tenant who occupies a portion of the flat and sublets the remainder in cubicles and bedspaces to as many individuals or families as he or she can crowd in. A flat in normal times may have as many as twenty five adults stowed away in cubicles, bedspaces and cocklofts: and the population is at present swollen with an addition of twenty five to fifty per cent, accommodated in existing houses.

172. As has already been pointed out, a cubicle will cost about five or six dollars a month, so that with the cost of food at five to six dollars per month per adult, the author of the appendix to the Report was constrained to remark "A family of four therefore, earning a total of sixteen dollars per month cannot really afford anything for rent or clothing."

173. The Commission recommended that Government should consider the erection of experimental quarters for their Asiatic employees. Up to the present little has been done in this connexion beyond the provision of lodging houses for a certain number of sanitary coolies, a few Public Works Department labourers, and certain subordinate staff at Government hospitals.

174. The Commission also recommended that Government should encourage and where necessary assist the establishment by charitable organizations of "settle- ments in the slum areas.

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A recent experiment in social settlement in Kowloon where a number of flats were rented and let to tenants without overcrowding, with the provision of a warden and a kindergarten, and the elimination of the principal tenant's profits, showed that in many cases a sub-economic rent had to be charged.

175. The main recommendation of the Commission was, however, that a per- manent Town Planning and Housing Committee be formed to advise Government on town planning and housing matters.

It is understood that legislation on the lines of certain sections of the Federated Malay States Sanitary Boards enactment, 1929, is being prepared providing for the appointment of an urban planning board with a view to proper zoning and planning. Tenement factories will no doubt in time be abolished, and all new factories confined to suitable areas.

176. The question of slum clearance and the provision of sub-economic housing would appear to depend on the restriction of the population to numbers which the Colony can properly support.

177. The Commission generally referred to the necessity of decentralizing the population and preparing a survey of local industry and housing, each in relation to the other. In connexion with decentralization the abandonment of the system of workmen's tickets on the Hong Kong trams has already been remarked.

178. In 1921 it was found necessary to control rents by a Rents Ordinance, the provisions of which were extended by the Rents Ordinance No. 14 of 1922, which expired on 30th June, 1926. Owing to the increase in population last year, the Prevention of Eviction Ordinance No. 6 of 1938 was enacted to prevent unreasonable eviction of tenants and to make provisions as to the rent and recovery of possession of premises in certain cases. By the Prevention of Eviction Amendment Ordinance, 1939, powers were given to the court to determine questions relating to rent, and certain restrictions were placed on the issue of distress warrants.

179. The present position is that housing for the working classes is generally unsuitable, inadequate, and expensive. Families and individuals are thrown together to the almost complete destruction of privacy. Where free housing is not provided as part of a worker's emoluments-and it must be remembered that such housing rarely takes into account the possible existence of a family-the amount required for rent in the case of a family man represents a disproportionately large part of his income.