ENG-1958 — Page 207

LAND AND HOUSING

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included sites for additional resettlement estate blocks, for other housing, for schools, clinics and welfare centres, for factories, and for Public Works Department engineering works. The largest clearance operation was to enable a road to be built linking Shek Kip Mei and Tai Hang Tung Estates; 597 structures on the line of the road, containing 8,062 persons, were cleared in four stages, the total area cleared being 5.25 acres. Many of the buildings were solidly constructed of stone, two and three storeys high.

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While the danger of major squatter fires has receded now that most of the larger squatter colonies have been cleared, there were thirty four fires in 1958, the largest of which, at Kowloon Tong, rendered 1,684 people homeless. It is not normally possible to offer immediate resettlement to fire victims, but, wherever possible, alternative sites are allocated on which they can build themselves new huts, either on the fire site itself (if it is not required for immediate development) or on any Crown land available in the vicinity. Where this is not possible, temporary hut sites are some- times laid out in the public streets for the fire victims until they can be resettled. During the year 5,417 victims of earlier fires were resettled from these street huts.

The administration of large multi-storey estates presents special problems, partly because of their size and partly because of the poor circumstances of the inhabitants, many of whom are not in regular employment. Resettlement has, however, solved the hous- ing problem for these people, and there is no doubt that the majority realize that they are better housed than most of the families in normal tenement buildings in the Colony and appreciate what is being done for them. One indication of this is the fact that, out of a total of $6,356,615 due as rents of rooms in 1958, only $3,520 had to be written off as irrecoverable arrears.

Every assistance is given to any voluntary organization willing to carry out welfare work in resettlement estates or cottage areas. In the cottage areas, sites are granted on permit to such organiza- tions. In the multi-storey estates, where no sites can be made available, the rooftops of the estate blocks, which have penthouses at either end, are allocated to charitable organizations for use as boys' and girls' clubs, under the supervision of the Social Welfare Department, or as schools, under the supervision of the Education Department. In addition, ground floor rooms are made available