WILLIAMS

OR @ pensioner “this is para-
Ise,” said the white-haired

Our Woman with a gesture at
Surroundings,

P; 1 ee
ibaryre aise is her bachelor

deve’ in a public housing
it ppment in north Toronto.
bgensiSts of a combination

ibn ting room with an ad-

iT

din; ;
tome kitchenette and a bath-
Rtoung pe caaise” is on the

Unit Or of a two-story, 16-
looks apartment building and
bench Cut on a big lawn with

®s and a few picnic tables.

Nonth,

t

ig Melt” foe a 72-year-old man
Youths, Incessant crashing of
OUtside feet on the fire escape
a is his kitchen widow. It is
Menp “ePit, three-room apart-
taj, 2 Sim with age and disre-
tirestnd €xuding noise from all
Wheres: It is a bathroom
Soak q the walls become so

— from upstairs — that
Witch Comes out of the light

luinttey don’t do a_ goddara
"Ove Unless you threaten to
“ste ee he told me. “Hell”
Esa. $65 per month.

ing, OXically, these two lodg-
bitig ®present the common am-
Miva of both people to find
"ene Y and convenience at low

T

yt’ Woman I talked to has
Mituteg © the man has sub-
ig F .SPace for convenience
they Euloys a noisy privacy.
De i "€ both exceptions among
ihe Nets living by themselves;
‘vg, °Man because she is rela-
te “appy where she is and
ty D 4n because he can afford
Nene” S© much for an apatt-

He ;

Nong’ @ veteran of the First
Dep Monet and receives $63
buble eb Veteran’s allowance.
He hi With his pension this
Mag “mM a monthly income of
‘any Practically affluence by
‘iy Pensioners’ standards, but
Yea aa under the $2,000 per
Non “nerally designated as the

. Ne for poverty.

‘ the Walcolm Taylor, speaking
Ke a td annual meeting of
Mi et Welfare Council,
ty Vert Since the cutoff line
ye fo Y is a $4,000-a-year in-
5000, ‘ a family of four and
a Sin = an individual, half
“ht 5 Sle persons and 40° per-
Amilies in Canada can

“D :
de Tadise” costs her $39.25

x

be classified as living in pov-
erty.

A good number indeed of
those persons living in poverty
must be pensioners, whose pen-
sion income for one year now
stands at $900.

Poverty is relatively easy to
endure for this particular vet-
eran. Every bit as proud and
gritty now as he must have been
at Paschendale, he makes do
and doesn’t become despondent
in his surroundings. He wouldn’t
live in a public housing deve-
lopment, he says. Size is about
the only positive feature of his
walk-up apartment and I for one
couldn’t live there.

But he is an exception. Many
pensioners do not have any sup-
plement to their $75. Others
lack the doughtiness of this ex-
sergeant. Why should they still
have to fight so hard at their
age?

For them too a_ low-rent
apartment in a public housing
development would probably be
paradise, or as close as it is pos-
sible to find.

The urgent necessity of more
public housing is acknowledged,
on paper, by. all government
levels from the federal and
provincial right down to muni-
cipal planning boards.

- On paper too are the follow-
ing facts from the Ontario Fed-
eration of Labor’s statement on
housing at its 7th convention
last year:

“Housing constructed for el-
derly people in the 1950-60
period amounted to less than
5,500 units, or roughly two-
fifths of one percent of the total
private housing production in
Canada. Altogether low-rent
housing both for family and el-
derly citizens totalled less than
one percent of private housing.

“In the same period only 5,000
public housing units were built
in Ontario and even though the
need in the city of Toronto alone
is estimated between 30,000 and
40,000 units.”

It is no secret that the Metro
Toronto Housing Company Ltd.,
which takes all applications for
low-rent apartments, has a

NOT SO WIDE A-GAP BETWEEN HELL’ AND PARADISE

Pensioners and

public housing

three-year waiting list of pen-
sioners.

While waiting. they continue
to live-in lonely, inconspicuous
rooms in the centre of the city
and spread out thinly through
all of Metropolitan Toronto.

In gratitude for their silence
we bestow on them the appella-
tion of “Senior Citizens” and
forget about them.

Why have government re-
ports — the Bruce Report 30
years ago, the Curtis Report 20
years ago, and the reams of pa-
per spent in arguing the case
for low-rent housing — caused
no more than a ripple of-action?

The National Construction
Council put its finger on the
answer as far back as 1934
when it told the Parliamentary
Committee on Housing: “Our
investigations of housing for
low income groups show that.
provision of this class of hous-
ing cannot ultimately be profit-
able to private enterprise...
The responsibility for housing
these groups is in the final an-
alysis the responsibility of the
state.”

Thirty years later this is still
a bitter pill to businessmen. The
Toronto Star in an editorial in
November, 1962, said:

“The federal government has
been favoring limited dividend
housing because it is less costly
and because it favors private
developers.

‘In limited dividend projects
such as the proposed Moss Park
development, rents are not geaz-
ed to ability to pay but to the
costs of the project plus a five
percent return on the invest-

ment. In Toronto the average’

rent in limited dividend pro-
jects is $100 a month while in
Regent Park South — a subsid-
ized public housing project
where rents are based on family
income — accommodation is
available for as little as $40 a
month and the average monthly
rental is less than $70.

“Tt should be obvious that
rents of $100 a month are clear-
ly beyond the means of most
large, low-income families who

are condemned to live in sub-

standard and slum housing. It
should be obvious that subsid-
ized public housing, not limited
dividend housing, is the answer
to housing needs of low-income
families.”

This kind of housing is no propaganda stunt; it exists in Toronto.
The lack of low-rent housing forces old-age pensioners into poor
dwellings at high cost. The top photo shows pensioners in Toronto
discussing their problems at a public meeting about a year ago.

Sa Re A

It is the answer for pension-
ers too, I might add.

The Ontario Federation of
Labor pursues the argument
when it indicts municipalities as
“too often guilty of practised
evasion of the issue, fear of fin-
ancial involvement and of pri-
vate-enterprise pressure groups
who exercise remote’ control
over Civic decisions.”

The bane of Tory Toronto is
Ward Two Alderman May Bir-
chard, whose one-woman cam-
paign for the rights of pension-
ers has made her a champion of
Toronto’s elderly and the night-
mare of many petty officials.

Another person concerned is
Mrs. Phyllis Clarke, chairman
of the-Metro Committee of the
Communist Party and a candi-
date for Board of Control. in
the forthcoming civic election.

She urges “decisive actipn
now to build 10,000 low-rental

y_ homes, to build senior citizens’

homes in the city as well as
the suburbs and to get the Alex-
andra Park project underway.”

Her opinion as to why politi-
cians talk a good fight on pub-
lic housing is that “big business
interests that control Metro
Council don’t want these things
done.”

In other words, no profit, no
action.

Don’t take a negative attitude
in your article, was the sugges-
tion of the woman I talked to in
the public housing development.

“There’s been precious !ittle
done, but you can’t overlook
it,” she said, “even though [I
did have to wait 214 years to
get my apartment. Look at the
place. Honestly now, how much
more could I ask for? If thev’ll
only build a lot more of the
sane right now it'll be a good
job.”

She’s right too. I suspect that
even the old soldier would like
to live in a public housing de-
velopment if he knew that he
wouldn’t have to battle an
“army” of bureaucrats and
“stand at attention” for years
to get there.

There’s not such a wide gap
between “hell” and “paradise.”
It’s the distance between a cold,
plasterless wall and a comfort-
able chair in a pleasant room,

The elderly are not so inter-
ested in long-range perspectives
as in the everyday comforts
which make for a_ good life,
These .are things which money
— the stuff they’re always tel-
ling us isn’t everything — and
government action can go a long
way toward providing.

October 30, 1964—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 5