Ce ER en ee ee ee Toe ee

i

By MARK FRANK

A POLICEMAN strolled his lone-
_. ly beat on a chilly May night
1s year along the crowded

Waterfront of Montreal’s Point

St. Charles. A parked panel truck

at an intersection caught his eye

and he began a'routine check,

His eyes widened with amaze-

Ment as he flashed his light over

the interior: :

Sleeping on the front seat was
bert Theoret, 27, and his ex-
Pectant wife. Under the dash-
Card were two of their chil-
dren, bedded down for the night.
n the back were three more. The

Seven members. of the Theoret

family had been sleeping this
Way for two nights, since eviction
from their one-room “home.”

Theoret, a trucker, explained
he had tried to get a home “but

€Y were too expensive and one
fellow wanted $100 key money
or a room.”

This | is -how Canadians are~

driven to solve their housing
“tisis, while Liberal politicians

Stomp the country boasting of

°w much they have done to
Use the people.
4 :

Speaking in. Toronto on May
8, Resources Minister R. H,
Salis predicted 118,000 hous-
€ starts in 1953. Starting a
Use on paper and building one
omplete with roof are two dif-
‘tent things, but Winters was
Not interested in facts. Other-
Pe he would have reported in

2 only 76,000 housing units
Were completed and that in a re-

“ent House of Commons debate

‘ had “hopes” for 90,000 com
Metions in 1953,

Now:90,000 housing units
"nds impressive, But placed
Sainst the estimated backlog of
eratio housing units needed it

lects the utter inadequacy of

So

_ “© Sovernment’s measures as

2 |

contrasted with its. gilt-edged
election promises in 1945 and
1949.

During May 1949, St. Laurent
gave this tongue-in-cheek gem
to a Moncton, N.B. audience: “We
are not going to be satisfied un-
til housing is provided forsevery
family.” That was four years

ago, but young: Theoret of Point,

St. Charles is still waiting — and
so are the near one-million fam-
ilies desperately needing accom-
modation. :

The very day that Winters
spoke a Dominion Bureau of
Statistics report said some 641,-
820 or 18.8 percent of al] house-

‘holds were overcrowded in 1951,

A crowded dwelling is one where
a number of persons exceeds the
number of rooms. That was two
years ago. Since then over-
crowding has increased. Quebec
had the highest overcrowding.
There just over one of every four
housing units is overcrowded —
216,955 of them.

When he was criticized in the
House of ‘Commons on April 28
for lack of government action on
housing in 1951, Winters told an
opposition MP that he ‘“‘complete-
ly overlooked the fact that there
was a Korean war on at. that
time and that parliament speci-
fically expressed itself as being
in favor of assigning top priority
to the defense construction pro-
gram and endorsed the govern-

- scandal

U

ment’s policy that housing should
take second place\only to the de-
fense construction program _it-
self.”

Thus every party in the House,
Liberals, Tories, ‘CCF and Social
Credit, gave their blessings to
the guns before housing policies.
Tory and CCF efforts to appear
as champions of housing for the

people look downright ridiculous -

in face of this record.

A week earlier (April 21) in
the same debate, Winters deliv-
ered himself. of a signal an-
nouncement on the Liberal
party’s attitude to housing. He
said: “It is not the responsibility
of the federal government to
build housing.”: Falling back on
the constitutional argument, he
passed the buck to. the provincial
governments. a
property and civil rights.”

His line of argument echoed
the notorious housing policy de-
claration of Liberal leader St.
Laurent, made in 1949, when he
told a Montreal audience that no
government of which he was the
head would ever undertake to

eae seek
rewnennne Sy ae
Wioemes olt ot

¢ IE des ae

“a matter of

ITAA TT IN i eel a |

subsidize low - rental housing.
That’s one promise the Liberals
have certainly stood by.

Even assuming that his figure
of 118,000 houses will be reached
in 1953, there was complete in-
difference on Winter’s part to
recognize that the vast majority
of Canadians cannot afford to buy
homes or even rent existing
space at their present incomes
at present prices and rentals.

In north Toronto; hundreds of
apartments are being built—not
one below the $100 a month
rent for three rooms, no children
please. The same is true of Van-
couver’s West End where high-
rent luxury apartments are sup-
planting the fine old houses of a
bygone day. Huge ‘real estate
schemes that followed creation
of a. Toronto metropolitan area
will provide houses for’ those
who can pay $16,000, the lowest
price. :

All these are included in, Win-
ter’s figure of 118,000° housing
units.

Under the National Housing
Act, the average house in Sep-
tember 1952 costing $11,358 re-
quires a down payment of $3,235
and an annual income of just
over $70 a week. If the down
payment were ‘reduced to five
percent instead of 20 percent, it
would require an income of $4,
409 a year to make the payments
or just under $85 a week.

But average wages are only
$55 a week; 75 percent of all

a the housing

Canadians (or 2 million citizens)
earn less than $3,000 a year.
Clearly the homes that, are be-
ing built today are prohibitive
to most Canadians or require
heavy mortgages.

In 1950 by contrast, an aver-
age house cost $8,805, requiring
a down payment of $1,928. In
1951. according to Central Hous-
ing and Mortgage Corporation,
the same House cost $10,211 with
a down payment of $3,188 requir-
ed — an increase of 65 percent.

When Winters gave these fig-
ures to the House of Commons
he declared: “The retirement of
any backlog of housing is in
large measure dependent upon
the price at which such housing
can be made available.”

This bit of truth is being con-
veniently forgotten by Winters
and his fellow Liberals in the
heat of the election battle. What
is also being omitted from such
speeches is the tremendous
prices being charged for build-
ing materials by the monopolies,
the high interest rates charged
for mortgages by the big life in-
surance, trust and mortgage cor-
porations.

Houses can be built — 750,000
over the next five ‘years, both
low-cost and low-rent units with-
in reach of all incomes, if the
government would cease channel-
ling millions into $25 million
army barracks, multi-million war
jet plane production and the like.
That is what LPP candidates are
saying from every platform
across the: country.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JUNE 19, 1953 — PAGE 9