By JACK PHILLIPS

ORE than 500 veter-

ans, Most of them

aoe Married men with

ae are on a rent strike

The € Old Vancouver Hotel.

th Y are on strike because

a Can’t afford to pay the

4 10 percent rent the
nanagement is asking.

ile their protest is part of

€ nation-wide struggle
Sint ‘ising prices, it springs
ly from the continuing

‘0 aie

ue Crisis in Vancouver. As
Beret letter to the tenants,
8 their house committee
tates.

e ake all other homeless vet-
» We want decent home to
* in, at prices we can afford
Boca Can our government
Wer oe Such honies? The ans-
to bury oo: Ottawa is willing
in uild 2,000 low-rental homes
HER ia now, if the city
hea. ! Will provide the lots and
Services. We want to

ow this: “What’s the hola-
a many other sections of
Webern entty, Vancouver's war
Rize = are beginning to recog-
© obstructionist tactics of

e
adm sent ‘Non-Partisan’ civic

: inistration for what they
~ Instead of meeting all gov-
ha: ent and private agencies
eve ‘Way, instead of making
for» effort to provide homes
a Veterans, they are stalling
Way Placing obstacles in the

When

hot the pressure gets too

KSad ‘it did a short time ago,
cil ™Sency meetings of the coun-
Otters held, wires are sent to
with and meetings are held
Vancouver M.P’s.

Np there is no consistent
cy, no energetic attempt to
int With the problem. Instead

Te is a policy of drift of
Cial recognition of veter-
Needs and actual capitula-
Briy to the real estate sharks,

ate contractors, owners of

SUpergj
ang:

AY, JUNE 27, 1947

slum property, and all the other

business interests who are
against low-rental, subsidized
housing.

What’s more, the outmoded
tax structure of Vancouver,

placing a heavy burden on home
owners, and the deplorable
state of essential services, like
sewers, make it very difficult
for government and private
agencies to initiate low-rental
projects on a scale necessary to
meet the needs of homeless vet-
erans.

R months now the hopes

of married Vancouver veter-
ans have alternately risen and
fallen over the prospects of
bringing at least 500 houses
from Bremerton to Vancouver.
The estimated cost of. placing
each home on 4 lot, fitting it
for occupancy, over and above
what it will cost the city to
provide necessary services is $2,-
100.

A few weeks ago it looked as
is the deal were cinched. Ot-
tawa promised to waive import
duties, and to put up a subsidy
of at least $500 for each home.
The sponsors of the local plan,
two air force. veterans who
formed an association for this
purpose under the B.C. Societies
Act, contacted two eastern in-
surance companies which agreed
to furnish $1,000 per home, eith-
er by floating bonds or by
straight mortgages. Then the
question arose of how to raise
the balance.

Should it be raised by tack-
ing it on the down payment,
or by public or private bodies?
Now the scheme is flatter than
the veterans’ hopes. The insur-
ance companies have pulled out
of the deal, and the federal gov-
ernment has refused to meet its
pledges until the’ houses have
been placed in Vancouver.

Vancouver’s veterans and the
general public must energeti-
cally protest this failure to
seize an opportunity to house
at least 500 veterans and their
families. They must protest to
Vancouver City Council and de-
mand that this body, in cooper-
ation with public or private
bodies, break the deadlock and
bring the homes to Vancouver.”

must be recognized that
the city council has consist-
ently refused to take the ne-
cessary enabling steps to set up
a housing authority, and to do
its share towards proving subsi-
dized housing for veterans. It
must also be ‘recognized that
the provincial government, aid-
ed by supporters in the veterans’
movement, has contrived to sit
on the sidelines while the hail
of criticism over the housing
crisis descended upon the col-
lective heads of the federal gov-
ernment and the city council.

While it is true that the main
public housing agencies in Can-
ada are federal, and that the
main local coordinating agencies
must be municipal, the fact re-
mains that the provincial govern-
ment has a responsibility to its
veterans, both in organized mu-

* construction

i)

nicipalities and in unorganized
territories.

Further, it has the resources
and the authority to live up to
this responsibility. The people
must demand that the provincial
government use its powers to
set up a housing authority and
take energetic steps, in cooper-
ation with federal, local and pri-
vate agencies, to tackle the
housing problem.

ANADA spent more than $20,-

000,000,000 on the successful
prosecution of the war. Surely,
then, we can find the money,
men and materials for homes.
In 1941 a committee of experts
in Ottawa proved that Canada
would require 700,000 new homes
in the first 10 years after the
war.

But what are the facts? In
1946 only 63,637 new homes
were built, the majority of these
by private contractors and in-
surance companies at prices and
rents far beyond the reach of
the average family.

Only 1,200 wartime houses, the
nearest thing to  low-rental
homes, have been built in Van-
couver. June 1 this year was
supposed to be the deadline for
municipalities wishing to - have
more homes built under this
scheme, but Vancouver City
Council exhausted the opportun-
ity by haggling over tax rebates
and services.

However, public pressure from
veterans’ and other organiza-

‘tions resulted in Ottawa extend-

ing the deadline to July 7. Re-
Minister CC. D.
Howe has stated he is willing
to build 2,000 wartime homes in
Vancouver, proyided he can get
the necessary cooperation. Again

the question arises: “What's the
hold-up?”
&

"S significant that home-

building has been declining
throughout the country in the
past few months. In Vancouver,
house-building permits have de-
clined by 50 percent, while in-
dustrial and commercial permits
have increased. And here are
the reasons:

@ The government’s policy of
price decontrol has boosted the
cost of lumber, plumbing, hard-
ware, paint and other building
supplies.

@ Savings of veterans and
war workers are nearly exhaust-
ed.

@ There is competitive pres-
sure from industrial and com-
mercial interests which can af-
ford to spend fantastic sums for
stores, bowling alleys, theaters,
and other non-essential buildings.

@ Governments have consist-
ently resisted widespread public
demands for a real program of
slum clearance and_ subsidized
low-rental homes.

In a brief recently presented
to Howe the Dominion presi-
dent of the Canadian Legion,
J. L. E. Price, stated that only
11 percent of the homes built
in 1946 were within the reach
of veterans in the low income
class, that is the majority of
Canada’s home seeking veter-
ans. And in 1947, he _ stated,
the figures would drop to 8.5
percent.

The veterans of British Co-
lumbia, and especially Vancou-
ver, have been conducting a
sharp fight on the issue of
housing «for nearly two years.
The main weakness of this fight
has been that the veterans have
more or less travelled alone.

Housing is more than a vet-
erans’ problem. It is a _prob-
lem for the whole community,
a National problem of prime
importance.

Today, with the prospects of
another economic depression
looming on the horizon, the
question of building homes,
with the aid of government sub-
sidy raised by taxing the cor-
porations and monopolies, as-
sumes new importance. Such a
program would help to stave off
crisis by providing jobs.

For this reason the recent
LPP proposal for the federal
government to build 200,000
homes in the next three years
deserves the attention of every
veteran.

HE fight for homes is more

than a question of veterans’
erganizations passing resolutions,
staging demonstrations, an pre-
senting briefs to Ottawa. It is
more than a question of broad-
ening the fight to take in the
trade unions, and other progres-
sive groups. Basically, it is a
major political question that
stems from the very heart of
local, provincial and national
politics.

The thousands of veterans in
Vancouver who can vote in civic
elections need to get behind
progressive people’s candidates

‘and help vote the old gang out,

the gang who have a hopeless
record in the field of providing
homes for veterans.

Further, the possibilities open-
ed up by ‘the decisions of the
B.C. Federation of Labor, to
unite labor in order to defeat
the reactionary Coalition provin-
cial government, deserve the
support of every veteran.

The old gang has failed to
tackle the housing problem. a
new deal is needed. Let’s all
pull together and put the old
gang out. In the mean time,
let’s keep the heat on, but let’s
raise the level of the fight. It
must become a broad, political
question, fought every day, witn
every means at our disposal and
carried into the arena of local,
provincial and federal politics
by the. united, political forces
of labor and the people. This is
the only road to success!

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 11