ENG-1956 — Page 181

HOUSING

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accounted for as the natural increase by excess of births over deaths; the remainder must be accounted for as immigrants, the great majority from China, who have chosen for one reason or another to come to Hong Kong. The year's excess of births over deaths may not present an immediate addition to the housing problem, although it will obviously do so in due course; the immigrants do, in-so-far as every immigrant means an additional person, usually an adult, to add to the overcrowding in existing accommodation. To house these 58,000 immigrants would cost about $30,000,000, if they were provided with accommodation of the type in the Resettlement multi-storey estates; it would cost about 120,000,000 if they were provided with the type of housing at present being financed from public funds and let on a non-profit-making basis. These figures do not include the cost of land. There would be less cause for alarm if the number of houses being built matched the need for accom- modation. The number of houses does continue to grow, and there is at the present time something of a building boom in the Colony. Over the last 5 years an average of over $66,000,000 of private capital has been expended each year on domestic accommodation. In 1956 approximately $163,000,000 of private capital was expended on building of which approximately $106,000,000 went into domestic accom- modation. It is doubtful whether as much as $40,000,000 of this went into tenement houses, or accommodation within reach of the pocket of the majority of the population. But even if it did, the fact remains that it would only just have sufficed for the numbers of the immigrants, assuming they could pay the rents demanded, without catering for the needs of the expanding population, and without relieving the existing density of overcrowding or decreasing the number of squatters.

The housing situation, therefore, continues to present many grave problems. For the majority of the population of the urban area, the only accommodation available is a cubicle,