_ By FRED WILSON

_. The housing crisis in Vancouver
'S 8 serious as ever, Vancouver city
all’s planning department declared
ast week in a major study of the
Ousing situation in the city. It is a
quiet crisis, without headlines or
much public attention, but as the
Tribune teported last week, for the
Posing poor, especially for poor
amilies, for single parents, for the
elderly, for handicapped people,
Me crisis is real, and it is getting
Worse,

A full 25 percent of the city’s
160,000 households are experienc-
He Some form of ‘housing pro-
ag city planner Ann McAfee
poed in her nine part report to ci-
*Y council. To be sure, for many the
Problem is related more to income
‘ an to the accommodation they
We in: 33 percent of all renters'and
oe pay more than 25 percent of

€ir income on housing.

But of the 40,000 households
With a problem, 28 per cent or
11,250 households not only can’t
afford their accommodation, but
they also live in poor quality, over-
“tfowded or inadequate housing.

McAfee’s description of the
TOusing crisis and a range of pro-
8tam options to remedy it will be
‘Umped on city ‘council for con-
Sideration and, hopefully, action
Sometime in early July. Action to
Meet people’s needs is not
Something that the NPA dominated
City council is known for, and a lot
Of pressure will be needed to get any
Meaningful action out of city hall.

Meaningful action in this case
boils down to direct action by the
City to get into the housing game
and provide affordable and ade-
uate accommodation for the
thousands of households which
ae been excluded by the private
a and by all of the various sub-
_ ‘Idy and housing programs to date.

Governments, particularly the
€deral government, have spent

‘Money on housing in general; more

an $110 million per year in one or

Nother subsidy program has come

to Vancouver each year for the

Past five years. The catch is that
- “most all of that money went to

“Vancouver and

developers and middle income peo-
ple least in need of assistance. “One
of the biggest myths about this
complex system of housing policies
and programs is that we were pro-
viding housing for low income per-
sons,’? McAfee said with regard to
“AHOP”, “ARP”, and Co-Op
Housing, ‘‘We weren’t.”” By 1978

Either the city builds
housing for the poor -

—or else no one will

with the new changes in the Na-
tional Housing Act, it will be even
tougher to get assisted housing for
those who need it most.

Up to now, most low income
housing has been provided in public
housing, that is housing built and
managed under public ownership.

In recent years, however, govern-

Vancouver
households
_ paying .
less than 25%
of income on housing
67% — 107,830

Renters paying 25-30%
Owners paying 25-35%
10% — 16,000

Renters paying 30-40%
Owners paying 35-40%
8% — 12,200

Paying more than 40%
15% — 24,200

1s pe

each of the various programs were
providing similar monthly rents in
d all of them at
substantially higher rents than the
older private sector housing which
they replaced. Of all of the
“assisted units’? built to 1978 in
Vancouver, only 28 percent were af-
fordable to the majority of renters
with annual incomes of less
than $12,000.

Low income people have simply

been left out of the picture. And

ments have all but stopped building
public housing and what funds were
available have gone to co-operatives
and non-profit societies. In 1977
only 59 units of public housing were
brought on stream in Vancouver.

The federal: government is very
unclear about the future of public
housing. Funds for land purchase
and construction require a cost
sharing arrangement with the pro-
vincial governments and, not unex-

pectedly, the Socred government
hasn’t jumped at the opportunity.

At the same time, the federal
public housing provisions, together
with the co-operative and non-
profit housing programs are being
rolled into a new program called
‘‘Low Income Program.’’ The new
program will be non-profit, but also
non-loss. That means with rents
geared to 25 percent of income,
every low income household must
be counterbalanced with a high in-
come household. Obviously, high
income households prefer not to
live in assisted housing. The result
will be that the great majority of
units will once again go to middle
income tenants.

The new program also requires
that all-capital funds come from
private banks and financial institu-
tions—a gift to the money lenders
of incredible proportions—with the
federal Central Mortgage and
Housing Corporation guaranteeing
the loan and writing down the in-
terest rate to two percent. The very
idea that a group of poor people
would go to the bank and borrow a
million dollars to build homes
reveals just how much of a middle
class program it is. The problems of
borrowing money, the high cost of
land and all of the other complica-
tions have apparently even ruled
middle class people out of the
game, as applications for co-
operative and non-profit housing
have almost completely dried up.

All of this will bring city council
back to the nub of the question:
what to do for the thousands of city
households that need assistance.
McAfee’s study isolated some
40,000 housenolds with housing
problems and broke them down in-
to four — rather arbitrary —
categories. Slightly more than 4,000
households are put in the ‘‘non-
liquidity group’’, that is they have
decent housing but can’t afford it
because too much of their assets are

tied up in mortgages. A second

group of 13,800 households,
McAfee calls the ‘‘ineffective de-
mand group’’; which means simply.
that they can’t afford to live where
they are. A third group of about
10,750 households are termed
“underemployed’’ and are in the
same boat as the previous group,
except that these are younger and
have a chance of doing better if they
can get a decent paying job. The
last group of 11,250 households are
the ‘‘underhoused group’? who
both cannot afford their housing
and live in inadequate housing.

The categories tend to understate’

the problem and to divert attention
from the real cause of the crisis: the
artificial shortage of housing
created by the domination of large
development corporations. The
27,000 households that McAfee

By HARRY RANKIN ~
. The city’s planning department
a completed a comprehensive
“dy of housing needs in Van-
©OUuver called Affordable Housing
tudy. It will be debated in city

©Ouncil in the near future. It con-.

ses, with statistics, what tens of
Ousands of Vancouver citizens are
oentully aware of, namely, that
_ = city has a serious housing crisis
a City council is doing little about

The report notes that:
f Vancouver’s 75,545 home

_ Wners, 14,270 or 19 percent are

raving over 25 percent of their in-
-°Me to finance their homes, that

» they are paying more than they

an afford,

Of Vancouver 85,685 renters,
“2130 or 45 percent are paying
‘Nts higher than they can afford.
x 400 households are overcrowd-

; 15,000 units are in need of major

pairs.

h An estimated 2,000 handicapped
so scholds and 6,000 elderly face
pees housing suitability pro-
“Sms, that, is, they.do. nor haye

- HARRY RANKIN. .

housing that meets their basic
needs.

The city’s population is declining
and will continue to decline in the
foreseeable future because families
with children are being squeezed
out. There is just no affordable ac-

. City coun-
cil has no housing policy be-
cause it is dominated by de-
velopers, real estate interests.

: No policy to meet housing

commodation, often no accom-
modation of any kind. Vancouver
penalizes families with children.

| will have more to say about this
Affordable Housing Study
prepared by the city’s, planning
departments, both inside and out-
side of city council. For the moment
] just want to add this:

In the face of this serious housing
problem for so many thousands,
Vancouver city council has cut the
budget of Red Door by $20,000!

What is Red Door? It is an agen-
cy that helps people in need, and
these are mainly low income people,
to find housing that is within their
means. It’s not easy, with the shor-
tage that we have in housing, but
they do a fine job all the same. -

Can you imagine a more heartless
set by city council than denying

these people even this small service

of trying to help them find suitable
accommodation? <

It was a decision made by the
mayor and his Gang of Six, who
live in wealthy, comfortable homes,
who know nothing personally about
what it means to have a housing

crisis

problem, and what is worse, who
couldn’t care less.
humanitarianism is such that they
would throw a drowning man an
anchor.

‘Solving’ our housing problem
by cutting the grant to Red Door is
like ‘‘solving’? unemployment by
cutting people off unemployment
insurance. ‘

The fact is that council has no
policy to solve the housing problem
that faces 40,000 households in
Vancouver. The reason that it has

“no policy is because it was and con-
_tinues to be under the domination

of the developers, real estate inter-
ests and financial institutions that
are responsible for the housing
crisis and who deliberately perpre-
tate scarcity to keep up prices.

If there is to be a change in coun-
cil policy it won’t come from coun-
cil itself. It will have to come from
citizen groups in the form of
pressure on council. Perhaps, in the
debate around the Affordable
Housing Study, citizen groups can
get together, develop a realistic pro-
gram, and demand remedial action
from council.

~ PACIFIC TRIBUNE— JUNE 1, 1979—Page 3

classified as having basically an in-
come problem, could also be viewed
as having a rent problem, and are
paying excessively high rents
because of the low vacancy rate.

In addition, the study completely
omits from consideration the
thousands of people living in slum
rooming houses and hotels in the
Downtown Eastside who are in
urgent need of new _ housing.
“There are a hell of a lot more than
11,000 people who need new hous-
ing, and lots of them are right down
here,’’ Downtown Eastside
Residents’ Association Bruce
Erikson replied. The report offers
little that will help low income
residents improve their housing
conditions, he said.

Erikson’s impressions of the
recommendations of the planner’s
report are solidly based. For after
showing conclusively the necessity
of direct city action to provide
assisted housing for low income
tenants, the report backs away from
the obvious conclusion of revitaliz-
ing the city’s non-profit housing
corporation. Instead McAfee
recommends that the city take on
the role of co-ordinator to get
senior governments and various
non-profit and co-operative groups
working together to provide needed
non-market housing. But how this
approach will work in the future
when it has failed in the past is not
explained.

The report also places emphasis
on shifting the focus of housing
subsidies to the low-income house-
holds most in need of assistance,
and away from the various give-
away programs to developers.
Hardly anyone will disagree with
the objective, but it is the federal
National Housing act which must
be changed and there is little that ci-
ty council can do about it in the
short term.

The large hole in the recommen-
dations which COPE alderman
Harry Rankin will attempt to plug is
for the city to take its own non-
profit housing corporation out of
mothballs and to take direct and
positive action to build low cost
housing. The city had such a cor-.
poration in 1975-1976 until the
resignation of the director, before a
single unit of housing had been
built. The corporation flopped, but
it was for political reasons, Rankin
argued. ‘“‘That was TEAM: they
didn’t want to build housing,’’ he

“said. ‘‘But that doesn’t mean that

the city can’t build good housing.
We can.”’

Unionists, housing experts and
community groups throughout
Vancouver agree with Rankin. Next
week the Tribune will look at how a
city owned and run non-profit.
housing corporation would work.

Their -

VANCOUVER
CITY HOUSEHOLDS
160,230
{

WITH HOUSING
PROBLEMS
40,000 — 25%

SINGLE
ADULTS TWO
13,100 PARENT
(11,500 renters) FAMILIES
5,340
(2,400 renters)
TWO
PERSONS
: aia SINGLE
: PARENT
FAMILIES
4,880
ELDERLY] | (4,400 renters)
5,980
(3,600 renters)
HANDICAPPED
: 1,500
(primarily renters)

Sn