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onto, nearly 14,000 families with close
to 30,000 children are on waiting lists
for public housing.) Eight out of nine
houses built with NHA loans in the
year 1967 were for the middle class
and the rich,

Decent housing is not a commodity
in the same sense as a family car, as
Mr. Hellyer infers. Decent housing is a
right of every Canadian. But while say-
ing that every Canadian should be en-
titled to clean, warm shelter as a basic
right, this clearly establishes govern-
mental responsibilities. The only way
this can be guaranteed is not by scut-
tling public housing programs, inade-
quate as they are. On the contrary, it
calls for much improved and extended
rental public housing programs under
public ownership and community con-
trol.

What hope is there now for a decent
home for people with less than $5,500
to $6,000 per year income? More than
2,000,000 live in dwellings unfit for
human habitation—run down, often
without baths, showers or even inside
toilet facilities. Their lives are blighted.
Their children often enter new schools
and public buildings that are beautiful
expressions of the triumph of modern
architecture and technology. They
come home to cramped rooms with
crumbling walls. They learn young
that the “affluence” of Canada is not
for them or for millions like them.

Public housing exists for only a frac-
tion of the low income families who
need it. Less than one percent of all
dwellings in Canada come under the
category of public housing.

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
singles out low-income public housing
tenants as conspicuous recipients of
public charity. It is this which results
in stigmatization and social discrimina-
tion.

Today we use electronic computers
and automatic processes in productive
activity and services. The productivity
of human labor has increased phenom-
enally in postwar years. Man is reach-
ing for the stars. There is no question
of our ability to produce for abundance.
Yet millions have to live in want of
decent shelter and comfort, even in an
advanced industrial country like Can-
ada. This, while billions are wasted for
useless and destructive purposes, such
as maintaining troops in Europe, a
quarter of a century after the Second
World War.

The housing crisis shows up drama-

‘PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FEBRUARY 28, 1969—Page 6

ve? &

AN ANSWER
0
HELLYER:

tically the evil nature of capitalism
which dominates the life of our coun-
try. Housing and food are under the
control of money profiteers. To them
these two essentials of life are not
social needs but only the means of their
own personal enrichment. We have a
housing crisis because Canadian so-
ciety is organized in a system based on
the drive for a maximum of private
profits rather than the fulfilment of
human needs.

Our proposal for public ownership of
rental public housing goes beyond the
concept of making housing a “public
utility,” particularly where “public util-
ity” means private ownership with
public control over profits and operat-
ing standards, but where public accoun-
tability becomes a questionable factor
and subject to many abuses. As an in-
terim step toward public ownership of
rental housing we propose the follow-
ing emergency housing program:

A MASSIVE PROGRAM OF
MODERN PUBLIC HOUSING

Public housing is the only hope of
rehousing the people who live in slums
and those with poor or no housing and
whose incomes do not permit escalat-
ing rents and increasing deterioration
of services.

We demand that federal and provin-
cial governments undertake now the
construction of at least 75,000 new
public housing units annually for a
period of ten years to replace what is
already substandard housing. This
crash program must be supplemented
by efforts at all levels of government
to acquire, rehabilitate and conserve
another 100,000 private units each year
which are decaying and becoming sub-
standard.

The expansion of public housing
must go hand-in-hand with basic re-
forms in public housing operations.
Tenant control must be brought to all
levels of administration and decision
making, from tenant selection policies
to project design. This should be pro-
vided for in a Public Housing Tenants
Bill of Rights. '

Money is not an obstacle to the solv-

‘ing of the housing crisis. What is

physically possible, in this respect, is
also financially possible. If our defense
budget was cut by 50 percent this
would provide close to a billion dol-
lars for public housing. Whatever tax
burdens may be involved should not
fall on those who are least able to pay
—the working man, the low-income
taxpayer, the small homeowner, or the
pensioner. Taxes should be borne by
those best able to pay—big real estate,
big corporations and special business
interests which now escape taxation

through loopholes and various unwar-
ranted exemptions, A tax on capital
gains has to be part of the tax struc-
ture.

Public ownership of all vacant land
is an inescapable necessity. Any re-
maining vacant land must be immedia-
tely acquired and assigned to urban
land banks until needed for new public
construction.

STRICT PUBLIC CONTROL
OF RENTAL HOUSING

Rent control, with strict enforce-
ment provisions must be enacted and
made to cover all rental housing. The
object must be to hold down rents and
to protect maintenance standards for
all tenants. ;

When a landlord does not maintain
specified minimum standards, public
authorities should be required to take
over the building early enough in the
deterioration process to save the build-
ing. The city or province would become
the landlord as a last resort. It should
take over all such properties and aban-
doned buildings on a permanent basis,
put them in livable condition, and oper-
ate them as publicly-owned housing.

Tenants are people, and landlords
with an investment in residential real
estate have a social as well as a finan-
cial investment. From this ought to
come certain social obligations which
any investor ought to be prepared to
meet,

Cooperative ownership of housing
projects is no satisfactory alternative
to public ownership of rental housing.
Tenant cooperators soon realize that
they are dealing with the illusion of
cooperation, rather than with hard
reality. They are not in control of the
situation. The real control is in the
hands of the banks and money-lenders
which control the interest rates.

FREE CHOICE IN HOUSING

Every individual must have a right
to live where he chooses. For workers,
however, this can only be meaningful
within the confines of labor mobility.
Where there are jobs available there
must also be housing for rental as well
as for individual ownership.

Recognizing the fact that the pro-
blem cannot be fully and finally solved
under the private profit system, we in-
sist that various segments of our Cana-
dian society can force the rejection of
traditional thinking and outmoded
methods of capitalism and bring about
joint action between federal, provin-
cial and municipal governments. The
most powerful initiative for provision
of funds must come from the federal
government. Buck-passing arguments

about constitutional jurisdiction must
not be allowed to prevent such an
approach. f

Besides the crash program to build
low rental public housing, our pa
calls for a billion dollar housing fung
to provide interest-free loans for the
building of workers’ homes, both co.
operative and for individual ownership,
In addition to this, there is the need
to expropriate slum landlords, under.
take serious renovation of older homes
and large-scale housing developments
in the core area of our larger cities,
thus providing housing and ample re.
creational facilities at prices people can
afford to pay.

There is also a need for some contro]
over costs and profits in the building
materials industry and its eventual
taking over for public ownership and
control, with specific reference to hous.
ing. To eliminate land speculators it
will be necessary at some point to na.
tionalize land, particularly for residen.
tial construction. Experts in the hous.
ing field have long urged governments
to set minimum standards of decent
housing for everyone and then proceed
to use the power of the public treasury
to implement that standard.

The Canadian Labor Congress,
speaking for the majority of organized
labor in Canada, stated the following
two years ago:

“. ., Under existing housing policies
home ownership has become unattain-
able for most low and middle-income
Canadians. If the housing crisis is to be
met, Canada must abandon two long-
cherished ideals; that every Canadian
should own a home on an individual
lot, and that private enterprise can
adequately provide such housing. Ris-
ing land costs and mortgage interest
rates as well as the mobility of the
Canadian population, have made these
ideals obsolete . . .

“The average home owner moves
every seven years, and one in four
recipients of family allowances moves
every year. Housing policies based on
private institutions and individual own-
ership are no longer realistic. The time
has come to treat housing as a public
utility, curb land speculators, stress
public cooperative ownership and build
multiple-unit dwellings that will house
Canadians in comfort, health, dignity
and privacy at prices they can afford.”

Housing construction today does not
keep pace with the population increase.
A backlog of slums and overcrowded
dwellings is building up. Already at the
1961 census, an estimated 923,000 Ca-
nadian households were lodged in
broken-down, over-crowded and unsan-
itary houses or were Straining theif
budgets to the limit and running into
debt in order to pay rent. Since then
the situation has deteriorated. Today
the number of families in physical and
financial distress over housing accom-
modation number 1,500,000 and 2,000,
000, or about one-quarter of all Cana-
dian families. More than double this
number can ill afford the new com-
mercial housing available.

In January, 1967, the president of the
CMHC revealed that in the decade pre

vious, construction costs per square —
foot increased by 13.7 percent for im
dividual NHA bungalows. In the same —

period the cost of land increased 413
percent. By 1971, the same authori

estimated that 200,000 housing units —

per annum would be required, of which
80,000 would be for private home own
ership and 120,000 for rentals.

The Hellyer task force reports
land costs have risen by 240 percent,
construction costs by 40 percent,
so on. At the same time it does
mention the fact that NHA interest
rates have risen from 4.5 percent 1
9 and % percent—an increase of mor
than 100 percent. At the same time
task force rejects a system of subsidies
for mortgages.

It is precisely this situation which
accounts for the fact that the only C#
nadians who do not face a hous
problem today are the fewer
40,000 Canadians with incomes
$16,000 per year. When counted with -

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