ENG-1957 — Page 226

192

HONG KONG ANNUAL REPORT

homes (undertaken by specially trained staff) in order to check the particulars given and collect further relevant in- formation, and by the end of the year 6,497 of these visits had been made, in addition to 3,191 personal interviews given at the head office on points of difficulty.

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By the middle of 1957 Government had spent, or was committed to the expenditure of, some $200,000,000 in schemes undertaken by the Resettlement Department, the Housing Authority and the Housing Society. The total capacity of such schemes, when completed, will be 380,000 persons. Nevertheless, the 'outlook for the future is far from cheerful. The population is increasing at a rate of over 100,000 persons a year and, in the not very distant future, may be increasing at this rate by natural increase alone. The problem of the provision of housing at a rate to match this increase is going to be a very difficult one. At the most conservative estimate, building costs may well have to amount to $100 million a year, if such persons are to be --provided with the desirable minimum amount of accommoda- tion. Some grounds for optimism exist in the fact that this necessary rate of building expenditure is well within the present capacity of private and public investment. In the financial year 1956-7 private capital alone provided almost $103,000,000 worth of domestic accommodation; and just over $36,000,000 worth of domestic'accommodation was pro- vided from public funds. The main difficulty is going to be the provision of sufficient land on which to build the houses. Even with as high a density as 1,000 persons to an acre, new land for housing will be required at the rate of 100 acres a year. It is still too early to see how exactly this can be done, but a start has been made with the appointment of consulting engineers, as described in the preceding sec- tion on Land Value and Development Trends, to investigate the possibilities of five sites in the New Territories for new

towns.

It was in order to obtain a clearer appreciation of the whole