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REALTORS

The following are excerpts from the
Toronto Real Estate Board’s report on
Housing and Urban Development.

“The cost of housing is extremely
high in Metro. The average price of a

_ new house is currently $32,361 (Janu-

ary 31, 1968), while resale houses are
selling ‘at an average of $27,197 (Aug-
ust 31, 1968)° °° Eee

“The cost of housing in Toronto is
by far the highest in any Canadian
city and probably the highest in North
America; it has risen by 50 percent in
the three year period since 1965.”

“One factor which particularly mili-
tates against the moderate income
group, characterized by young families,
is the difficulty of arranging financing
for the purchase of older or existing
houses.

“Federally guaranteed mortgages,
limited to a value of $10,000 are pa-
thetically irrelevant in terms of the
Toronto housing market and it is un-
derstood that only a handful of such
mortgages have been arranged in the
area since the program was initiated
in November, 1966.

“The lack of low-rent housing is a
national problem. Locally it may be
attributed to many causes, including
the lack of available land in inner lo-
cations and a certain degree of resist-
ance to the establishment of public
housing in many suburban neighbor-
hoods. :

“A major problem to be resolved in
order to bring lower cost housing with-
in economic range of more families is
to accommodate the reallocation of the
responsibility for education, welfare
and other basic government costs so
that they can be spread more equit-
ably against the total resources of the
community.

“Municipal taxpayers are being de-
prived of many other essential services

+ in order to pay for mounting educa-

tion costs: Municipal school levies on
building lots contribute to the end
cost of the housing to be constructed
thereon, sy wi

“Municipalities tend to hold ‘back

development until the new school faci-
lities that will be required—and other
services for that matter—can be fin-
anced.

“Education is a provincial responsi-
bility. The province is unable to as-
sume a greater share of the education

burden on municipalities, and thereby.

free them to install land~ services,
without retaining a larger share of the
federal government’s income tax re-
venue.

“We do not propose to pursue this
topic further, except to suggest that if
the government of Ontario fails to
convince Ottawa that it should get
back more of the income tax revenue
paid into the Federal Treasury by the
Province’s working citizens, then in-
creases in sales taxes and Provincial
income taxes may be necessary to
cover increasing costs.

“Such taxes tend to be more hurt-
ful to those in the lowest third of the
income scale—the group which is least
able to afford an adequate standard of
housing in Ontario’s urban centres.

“Housing is the only necessity of
life taxed by all levels of goverment.
Necessities of life should not be taxed.
Taxes are not generally considered to
be inflationary, but in the case of land
and housing they are, for these are
the foundation of the economy and as
their cost is inflated, so also are the
effects felt in an inflationary response
throughout the economy.

“What housing policy we have had
has not had as its basic aim satisfying
the right of every Canadian to decent
shelter.

“Instead, our housing policy, or other
policies impinging on housing, have
been subordinated to other aims —
deflationary devices such as manipula-
tion of mortgage money, taxation, sti-
mulation of the economy, trimming
excesses of unemployment and urban
renewal.

“Those responsible are at the cross-
roads of decision. Positive action can
remove present obstacles from the path
of progress. The direction which must
be taken seems. clear. It is time to
stabilize the entire housing industry
through an ambitious program of long-
range planning. It is time to rid the
country of blighting influences that are
inconsistent *with! the image. of a: self-
reliant; modern industrial society.”

The following are excerpts from the
brief of the Communist Party of Can-
ada to the Hellyer Task Force:

Housing construction does not keep
pace with the population growth. The
backlog of slums and overcrowded
dwellings is increasing rapidly. The
1961 census brought an estimate that
923,000 Canadian households were
lodged in broken-down, over-crowded
and unsanitary housing, or were
straining their budgets to the limit
and running into debt in order to pay
rent. Since then the situation has de-
teriorated so that the number of fami-
lies in physical and financial distress
over housing accommodation now num-
ber close to two million, more than
one quarter of all Canadian families.

Canada’s new commercial housing—

~ and much of the old housing as well—

is so expensive that nearly four mil-
lion Canadians, with incomes of less
than. $3,000 per year, cannot afford to
either buy or rent this kind of accom-
modation.

Some shocking facts on this situa-
tion were recosded following coun-
try-wide research published in 1964 in
a book entitled “Good Housing for
Canadians.” Since that time housing
costs have taken a leap forward. (Ex-
ample: average price of a new house
in Toronto in April of 1964, as report-
ed in The Monetary Times, was
$19,297. Only 14 months later, in June
of 1965, the average was up to $27,622.
Cost of housing, including rental ac-
commodation, in Metropolitan- Toron-

to has more than doubled in the last

five years.) :

An increasing number of families,
including those in the middle and some
higher income brackets find it increas-
ingly difficult to meet the cost of clean
and comfortable shelter in our largest
urban areas.

Federal government subsidies for
housing amount to less than two mil-
lion dollars per year, a figure which
the Canadian Labor Congress has
properly described as shockingly low
for a country as rich as ours.

Unlike the European approach;
where some capitalist countries treat
housing as a public utility and where
non-profit housing is provided for per-
sons within a broad income range; the
North American welfare approach to
public housing singles out low income
tenants as conspicuous recipients of
public charity and sets them off in
ghettos for the poor, resulting in stig-
matization and social discrimination.

Bad housing is an important factor
contributing to child neglect, ill health,
break-up of families and delinquency.
Most housing developments lack faci-
lities such as day nurseries, recreation
and social service centres. Low in-
come families are the ones who suffer
most because they do not have the
means to escape from these conditions.

Dependence upon speculative pri-

vate capital and the market economy .

in the housing field, virtually excludes
overall planning, and brings about con-

COMMUNIST PARTY

tradictions and anomalies. High-rise
developments often swamp local
schools and other facilities, causing
severe dislocations and a steep rise in
local taxation. These encroachments
cause many municipalities to actually
resist housing developments in the in-
terest of seeking a better balance be-
tween residential commercial and in-
dustrial assessment.

The Communist Party insists that
housing must be treated as a public
utility, and that land speculation and
private profits must be taken out of
housing. Various ‘income levels must
be mixed in housing developments to
‘put an end to discrimination based
upon levels of income. Public funds,
including Canada Pension funds, must
be used on a vast scale for provision
of public housing. Traditional think-
ing and outmoded methods, based
upon private profit motives and nar-
row consideration must be rejected,
with a powerful initiative from the
federal government. Buck-passing ar-
guments about constitutional jurisdic-
tion must be rejected in order to come
to grips with the problem.

A crash program for subsidized low
rental housing is called for. Perhaps as
much as a billion-dollar housing fund
is needed to provide interest-free
loans for the building of homes, co-
operative as well as for individual
ownership. There is an urgent need to
rebuild the core area of our cities, re-
novate older homes, and to expropri-
ate slum landlords.

There is an urgent need to control
costs and profits in the building ma-
terials industry, and eventual public
ownership and control with specific
reference to housing. Action must be
taken to stop the private efaniinten
in land and to control rents on hous-
ing projects. (Recently, in the city of
Windsor, the Ontario government
moved to increase geared-to-income
rents to the point of wiping out mon-
etary gains made by auto workers in
recent negotiations with employers.)

As every politician knows very well,
housing needs cannot be met by pri-
vate investment, higher interest rates
and more stringent regulations of
loans for prospective home owners.
Nor can housing be used as an instru-
ment of fiscal policy to regulate the
economy, as the Economic Council of
Canada has already pointed out.

Public funds for large-scale invest-
men at low or no interest, treating
housing as a public utility, is the only
way. Such a policy must be accom-
panied by land assembly projects un-
der public ownership and control with
a curb on all private speculation in
land.

Canada has both the technical skill,
the resources and the labor power
needed to build adequate housing for
everyone. It is the government’s res-
ponsibility to proceed with programs
that will provide every citizen with
modern housing facilities at prices
everyone can afford to pay.

;

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—OCTOBER 18,

1968—Page7 _