ENG-1964 — Page 152

LAND AND HOUSING

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clear areas further afield for sites for new resettlement estates in the outskirts of Kowloon, at Aberdeen on the Island or in the New Territories. A new estate is also being formed at Yuen Long in the New Territories, for resettling squatters cleared locally.

Reclamation schemes are reducing the number of sheltered anchorages and it has been found necessary to resettle boat squatters to relieve congestion. During the year 12,273 boat squatters were resettled. The main aims are to preserve the maximum available space in typhoon shelters for fishing and other working craft and to reduce the serious health risk which these static boats constitute.

Cultivators in the urban area who opened up their cultivation before October 1954 and who lose their land and livelihood through clearance for development are given monetary compensation. During the year $638,943 were paid to cultivators against the clearance of 22 acres of cultivation.

New squatting is contained as far as possible; huts built before 1954 (or 1956 in the case of rooftops) are tolerated but new squatting is forbidden. Annual surveys are made to determine the number of people living in these tolerated structures. The 1964 survey indicated 504,571 squatters in the urban areas surveyed, including 64,765 on rooftops and a further 38,769 in Tsuen Wan District. Squatters in unsurveyed areas are thought to number some 60,000. New unauthorized huts and unauthorized extensions to existing huts are demolished; during 1964 16,396 such demolitions took place; 11,846 rooftop squatters and pavement huts squatters were resited when tenements were demolished for redevelopment during 1964. Another 28,628 dispossessed tenants from 384 dangerous buildings were allocated sites on which to build temporary structures pending resettlement into new estates.

The increasing number of tenants evicted from dangerous pre-war buildings was one of the factors taken into account in the re-examina- tion of resettlement policy this year. While the law already provides for compensation in most cases there was no automatic entitlement to resettlement. The 'Review of Policies for Squatter Control, Resettlement and Low-Cost Housing' adopted by the Legislative Council as a guide to future policy put the former tenants of those buildings at the head of a priority list for resettlement. To avail themselves of this priority they will pay a lump sum as an advance on their resettlement rent, the sum having been fixed in the light