ENG-1967 — Page 174

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LAND AND HOUSING

240 square feet in the Mark I and II estates are divided into four grades and are available at $200, $150, $115 or $80-a-month rent, according to locality. In the Mark III and IV estates the sizes vary again and, as with domestic rooms, rents are higher. A shop of 258 square feet in a Mark IV estate, for instance, attracts a rent ranging from $268 a month to $109.50, depending on locality. Rents include rates and the gradings are subject to annual review. Some shop spaces are used by government departments and private welfare organizations as schools, clinics or nurseries. Even the rooftops in Mark I and II blocks are put to use. Most of them have been allocated to voluntary agencies who operate schools or children's clubs under the guidance of the Education or Social Welfare Departments. In some of the Mark III blocks the top floors, suitably modified, are used for schools, while in estates incorporating Mark IV and V buildings, separate six-storey build- ings (each with 24 classrooms) are provided for school accommo- dation. Some estates have community centres and, in the latest ones, the tendency is to concentrate ancillary services into separate buildings for welfare services, restaurants and administration.

Provision is also made for the small factories which are often found operating in squatter areas. To enable people resettled from these factories to continue earning a livelihood, multi-storey reset- tlement factory blocks have been built. With the passage of time it has also become necessary to recover, for more intensive develop- ment, land formerly occupied by factories on annual permits. These undertakings are generally more substantial than 'squatter' factories and workshops; but when their permits are cancelled the owners often have difficulty in finding alternative accommodation. It has been the practice for some years to offer resettlement to the operators of such concerns to enable the land which they occupy to be developed. Because of the need to use a simple design in order to keep construction costs, and therefore rents, as low as possible, a number of trades cannot be accommodated in the multi- storey factory blocks and consequently some factories can be resettled only if the owners are willing to change their trades.

The first factory blocks, dating from 1957, are five storeys high and provide industrial working space in units of 198 square feet. A later version has units of 256 square feet, an arrangement repeated