ENG-1959 — Page 21

8

HONG KONG ANNUAL REPORT

aside for classrooms and the Director of Education allocates these rooms to voluntary organizations. In addition there are Govern- ment or Government-aided schools in the vicinity of most estates.

The development of the resettlement estates and cottage areas is, however, only one chapter of the story of public housing in Hong Kong. These estates were designed to meet the problem of the squatters: but not everybody in urgent need of cheap accom- modation is a squatter. To meet the needs of the middle-income earner with an income of between $300-$900 a month, the Hong Kong Housing Authority, a statutory non-profit-making enter- prise, was set up in 1954. The Authority's first estate, completed at North Point in 1958, accommodates some 12,300 persons in 1,955 flats arranged in 11-storey blocks. This estate cost some $32 million and has its own shops, school, clinics and assembly hall. The flats can accommodate from 3 to 8 persons and rents vary accordingly from $78 to $170 a month.

The Authority completed its second estate in 1959 at Sai Wan Chuen on Hong Kong Island. This estate cost $8 million and accommodates 4,000 persons in 638 flats. Early this year, also, work started on the third and largest estate at So Uk, Kowloon. This estate should be completed early in 1961, and will accom- modate 32,000 persons in 4,520 flats at a cost of $48 million. But a further and even larger development is now being planned. It is an estate at Clearwater Bay Road, Kowloon, to be completed by mid-1962, which will house 43,000 persons in 7,620 flats at a cost of $52 million. By the end of 1962, therefore, the Housing Authority will have provided for 91,300 persons in 14,733 flats at a cost of some $140 million, borrowed from the Government.

The Housing Authority is not, however, the only organization dealing with accommodation for the middle-income earner; there are two other voluntary organizations who are particularly active in this field. Both of them are non-profit-making bodies supported by Government funds who, like the Housing Authority, aim at providing housing at the lowest possible rentals. By the end of the year 1959, the larger of these, the Hong Kong Housing Society, had completed 3,474 flats accommodating 21,643 persons and was building or planning a further 6,808 flats to accommodate an additional 45,046 persons. This Society has been assisted with loans from the United Kingdom Colonial Development and