‘Wild’ economist bemuses
in debate on rent controls

If a PhD economist, a ‘‘senior
economist”’ of a research institute,
debated the subject of rent controls
with a political activist from Van-
couver’s poorest neighborhood
who has no university education at
all, which person would you expect
to argue that:

e Rent controls are like a drug
addiction. “‘It feels good to begin
with, but problems come later.”

e Rent controls are responsible
for the housing shortage. ‘‘If you
won a million dollars in a lottery,
would you invest in housing?”’

e Rent controls are responsible
for slum housing. ‘‘Landlords have
no incentive to fix up premises.””

e Rent controls encourage racial
discrimination. “‘If price control
doesn’t function, other methods
will be used.”

e Rent controls encourage
crime. ‘‘When alcohol was pro-
hibited, you had Al Capone types
in Chicago.”’

e Rent controls reduce the pro-
ductivity of the Canadian worker.
“There is a lower labor mobility.”

e Rent controls are unfair. ‘‘It is
not certain that landlords are richer
than tenants.”

The answer is already apparent.
Only the academic could be so
divorced from the real world, while
prentiously declaring the final
word upon it.

This academic, however, is no
abstraction. Heis Dr. Walter Block

of the right wing Fraser Institute
who last Thursday descended from
the Bute St. think tank (at least as
far as the Ballroom of the Georgia
Hotel) to debate rent controls with
Downtown Eastside Residents’
Association president and COPE
aldermanic candidate Bruce
Eriksen.

The idea for the debate
originated with the sponsors, the
Association of Professional Ex-
onomists, which in an obvious at-
tempt to ‘‘moderate’’ the ‘‘ex-
treme’’ viewpoints of Block-and
Eriksen, chose the Rentalsman,
Jim Patterson, as moderator of the
debate.

The about 30 economists and
half again as many media people
who turned out were no doubt
drawn by the contrast of the
debaters. But if they came with pre-
vonceived stereotypes, they were
undone by the reversal of roles
which ensued.

Eriksen, the supposedly wild,
east end radical, argued reasonably
that rent controls were introduced
in 1974 because of the failure of the
“free market’? to supply affor-
dable housing. It was only after the
vacancy rate had dropped to below
one percent, like today, that con-
trols were brought in.

“Tt was the failure of that ‘free
market’ to meet the housing needs
of people which caused the need for
controls, not as Mr. Block would

have us believe, controls which
caused the housing crisis.”’

Block had acknowledged that
rent controls never did apply to
new buildings, but had argued that
the ‘‘fear’’ of controls had still
deterred building.

‘‘What a crock of bull,”’ Eriksen
replied. Housing starts were up in
1974 after controls were introduc-
ed, and they plummetted again
(due to high interest rates and the
removal of federal tax incentives)
in 1978 when the Socreds started to
decontrol rents. ‘‘Perhaps controls
stimulated housing,’’ Eriksen jab-
bed, tongue in cheek.

For the argument that controls
cause derelict housing, Eriksen had
only to point to his own
neighborhood, never covered by
rent controls, where a DERA study
found 10,000 violations of health,
fire and standard of maintenance
bylaws in only 23 hotels and room-
ing houses. :

In contrast, Block, the sup-
posedly sage professor, was
reckless at best as he went through
the litany of horrors associated
with rent controls. By the time he
reached his final, crushing argu-
ment, it was met only with a stunn-
ed bemusement.

“Lets have a real Draconian rent
control,’’ he suggested, ‘‘Lets
reduce rents 10 percent a year until
there are no rents anymore. There
will be no housing either... .”’

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TRIBUNE

JIM PATTERSON (L), BRUCE ERIKSEN...agree on the need for gove™

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ment intervention in housing market, but disagree on subsidies |

developers.

What that had to do with rent
controls in B.C. in 1980, no one
quite knew.

Patterson spoke last with the in-
tention of ‘‘clearing up’’ the inac-
curate statements of both debaters.
But his 45 minute speech was aimed
only at Block’s 15 minutes of
debatable points.

To confirm his position in the
middle, the Rentalsman said he
didn’t like controls and would

subsidies to developers,

prefer the market to run itself. Bul
he did not, or could not, comet
any statement of Eriksen’s. ]
And in the end, Patterson had!
agree with Eriksen that the ofl)
solution to the housing crisis ®
more, not less, government ™
tervention in the market. al
But while Patterson called for
EBrikset

called on the government to build

housing itself.

Emergency steps to deal with housing crisis _ i

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

What should city council’s
priorities be at this particular time?

We know what they are — a
trade and. convention centre,
Transpo 86, a new stadium and
similar developments. But are these
the most pressing needs of Van-
couver at this time? I don’t think
so.
Among all the problems that
face us, the most serious one is un-

doubtedly the housing shortage. It
is, or should be, the number one
priority of city council.

The lack of housing is driving
rents sky-high and out of all reason
and it is doing the same thing to the
price of homes. Actually it isn’t the
lack of housing that’s doing this;
it’s the landlords and developers
who are taking advantage of a
situation which they helped to
create. Let’s not kid ourselves —

the housing shortage did not just
happen. It was created, deliberately
created, by governments at all
levels. In doing so they played into
the hands of the big corporate
landlords and developers.

The housing shortage in the
Lower Mainland could be over-
come in a short time, within a year
or two. All that is required is a pro-

ject to build 5,000 new rental units

a year for the next several years.

The total cost would be less than
what is to be spent on a trade and
convention centre, a new stadium,
Expo 86 and B.C. Place.

It can be done provided that the
three main levels of government
take the following steps:

1. Municipal -councils should
provide land at a greatly reduced
rate, at about one-third of the
market price. Most municipal

w the eruption of Mount St. Helens now
marked as one of the historic events of a
new decade, it’s interesting to see how some
have viewed the devastation that followed in the
seismic blast. ;

For the doomsayers, of course, the disaster
was an omen of what is to come in the 1980's,
but for others it provided new, convenient

justification for industry to wreak environmen-

tal havoc.

That was the line taken by Norman Johnson,
the president of Association of Professional
Engineers, who said last week that people

needn’t concern themselves too much with the

environmental damage which would result
from the construction of the Kemano II power
project since whatever damage was caused
would be small compared to Mount St. Helens.
In an interview in Terrace, he insisted: ‘‘The
flooding of a few square miles and the dropping
of the water level of a minor river in B.C. is
trivial compared to the damage caused by the
mud flows and ash fall from Mount St.
Helens.” :
Fortunately, elsewhere in the Pacific Nor-
thwest, some sanity prevailed as the daily
newspaper in Portland, Oregon, the Oregonian
noted that comparisons were being made be-
tween the intensity of the volcanic explosions
and that of megaton bombs, and commented
soberly:
“This comparison must not fail to remind
the world that a nuclear war would destroy
most of the world’s life, including man himself.
“‘What if all these clouds and debris had been
hotly radioactive as would have been the case in
PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JUNE 27, 1980—Page

PEOPLE AND ISSUES-

a nuclear bomb attack? The estimated 800,000.
tons of dust that fell on Yakima alone would

‘ have fried every living thing it touched . . . The

radioactive dust cloud from such a nuclear
bomb explosion would circle the globe for
years.”

The editorial which appeared in the paper’s
May 25 edition, ended on this note: ‘Let those
who are prone to rattle sabres visit St. Helens . .

* * *

his Thursday, June 26, as the Tribune goes
to press, the world will be marking the 25th
anniversary of the Freedom Charter, the

historic document that has become the clarion

call for the struggle against apartheid in South
Africa.

The charter was a year in the making, as
South African democrats visited thousands of
homes, under conditions of only semi-legality,
to ask the people how they thought a new,
democratic South Africa should be built. Then,
on June 26, 1955, the historic Congress of the
People was held in an open field in Kliptown,
near Johannesburg, to ratify the Freedom
Charter.

More than 3,000 delegates representing the
African National Congress, the Congress of
Democrats, the South African Indian Con-
gress, the Congress of Colored People and the
South African Congress of Trade Unions
defied the police to hold the huge rally.

* * *
A‘ on the subject of South Africa, we must
offer our apologies for the error that ap-
peared in the caption under the page 2 photo

ss

last week of the demonstration marking the an-
niversary of the Soweto events. The printer’s
gremlins were particularly vindictive that day,
somehow deleting the word ‘“‘hundred”’ so that
it read ‘‘several”’ instead of ‘‘several hundred’’,
and changing the word ‘‘injured”’ to ‘‘invited.”’
The result, as readers will have noted, was
something of a disaster.

For the record, the sentence should have
read, ‘‘Several hundred were killed and several
hundred more injured in 1976 when police and
soldiers opened fire on demonstrating students
in the black township outside Johannesburg.’’
In fact, 600 were killed.

* * *

ties will be something new this fall in the
progressive labor movement: a labor orien-
tated television show.

Although limited to the Lower Mainland,
and only one hour per month, it will be an im-
portant first step in breaking the almost total
monopoly which ideologists of the status quo

have on that important medium.

Labor Journal as the volunteer production

committee has dubbed it, will be a one hour, -

news magazine program built around a mon-
thly feature report. The first show will feature a
special report on unemployment.

The Tribune’s Fred Wilson, a member of the
committee, advises that the production group

_can still use additional members. No experience

is necessary; if you feel it is about time there was
a pro-labor show on the tube and would like to
help, contact Fred.

_ railroads and new port faciliti

councils, including =Vancouv»
have land available. pis |

2. The provincial governiny ”
should subsidize rents for people
with low income — pensi0 tl
those on welfare, unemployed,
people on low wages — so that
do not pay more than 25 percent
their income on rent.

I don’t want to hear any pr
cial government politician saY rhs
they haven’t got the money. —
past week the provincial gover
ment cut the taxes on
operators and race horse reed
by $5 million a year. 3 ial '

This past week the provill wail
government also made a deal that
Japanese corporate interests out
will require subsidies from |
taxes running into hundr ev
milions of dollars just to build! |
them! (How much better it woul
be for B.C. if new industries gv
make gasoline out of coal or 4 be |
petro-chemical industry would
built on these coal fields. Wel’
ing skunked at Sukunka!)

3. The third step required Pa,
provision of mortgage money
interest rate of two per cent. | sal

- AndI don’t want to hear Fed got
politicians say that they have te
the money. :

The deferred income taxes ( the
is income tax which is owing!
federal government but 1S ow
held by the big corporations) is
amounts to over $15 billiondO 5
These corporations are hol were
back interest free. If they 1
charged only 10 percent im ine
(which is a lot lower than the Fone
rate of interest on loans) this®”
would bring in $1.5 billionay™

; US
more than enough to provise ie \

u

ing loans at an interest rate 0
cent.

“These are the three ess ba
steps. They are all relatively easy ts
realize, provided the govern™
concerned are willing to act