ENG-1958 — Page 200

LAND AND HOUSING

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might take to ensure that these needs are met so far as is practic- able. The Committee recommended that such measures should aim at the eventual provision of sufficient housing to ensure that each person had not less than 35 square feet of habitable floor area; the Committee also pointed out that if all the present regular domestic accommodation was shared equally amongst all the pres- ent inhabitants, everyone would have less than 35 square feet and additional accommodation for some 750,000 persons was required before all the existing urban population could be satisfactorily housed to the standard recommended. The Committee advocated a 10-year programme to achieve this aim; other recommendations dealt with the development or redevelopment by the Government of sufficient land, and the provision or extension of the necessary communal facilities, to meet the needs shown, and the co-ordina- tion and direction of all public housing activities in a programme designed to assist those processes of development and redevelop- ment required. At the end of the year these recommendations were under consideration by the Government.

RENT CONTROLS

The 1947 Landlord and Tenant Ordinance replaced certain temporary proclamations made shortly after the end of the war. It was designed to protect tenants in controlled pre-war premises, and determined the maximum increases in rent (30% for domestic premises and 45% for business premises over the standard or, generally speaking, 1941 rents) which any landlord could charge in these controlled premises. Essentially the same controls exist today, although increases of 55% of standard rent for domestic premises and 150% for business premises were per- mitted in 1953, the latter having already been raised to 100% in 1949. It is now possible for a landlord wishing to redevelop controlled property to obtain permission to do so through a Tenancy Tribunal on conditions which include the payment of compensation to tenants for the loss of their tenancies. Particulars of exemption proceedings during the year are given in Chapter 13.

Since 1953 two Tenancy Inquiry Bureaux have been set up within the framework of the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs to assist in the smooth working of the Landlord and Tenant