CCORDING to George
Bernard Shaw, every

A Bens new move-
ment is met with five stages
of public reaction. These
are:

It’s impossible.

It’s against the Bible.

It will bankrupt the country.
It isn’t being done right,
We knew it all the time.

‘The time has come when most
realistic people agree that good
housing is not impossible or un-
Christian, that bad housing is
actually bad business.. But the
problem of just what to do
about housing and just how to
do it is another matter entirely.
One fact is certain. We in
Vancouver are going to pay for
housing. The question is wheth-

er we are going to pay blindly

or intelligently. We have to
house our people, either in de-
cent living accommodation—or
in hospitals, mental institutions,
reformatories and jails.

Back in 1919, the people of
England had a housing prob-
lem. It wasn’t as acute as ours
is today, but they decideq it
was time to take action.

First of all, they passed a
Town Planning Act which ord-
ered all town governments to
take responsibility for providing
low rental housing for needy
citizens, and required every
town of 20,000 to prepare a town
plan for approval of the na-
tional government.

A few years later further acts
required the towns, which had
given substantial grants to fin-
ance the projects, to contribute
towards housing subsidies.

Trade unions offered to train
more building apprentices, and
contractors agreed to keep their
bids as low as possible,

By 1933 the government had
ruled that all new housing pro-
jects must be intended solely
for ex-slum dwellers,

Now England has built more
than a million and a half new
homes which rent within the
working-class budget.

fe nations that went down
in defeat in the. First World
War were in a more desperate
Situation, Austria suffered from
bad housing, starvation and in-
flation simultaneously, Private

_ enterprise, of course, was help-
less, so the state took over. The
Vienna city government alone
rehoused one-tenth of its popu-

lation in garden-court apart-
ments, equipped with day nurs-
€ries, play grounds, community
laundries and kitchens, And all

this was done by a city on the
verge of bankruptcy.

Conditions in Germany in 1919
were almost identical, but be-
‘tween 1925 and 1930 Germany
waged a campaign against’ slum -
Conditions. <A govern-
ment housing research depart-
Ment was set up and the best
architects were put on the gov-
ernment payroll. By 1931, be-
tween two and three million
new homes had been built.

special

S 0

However, housing plans in
Austria and Germany were halt-
ed by the Nazis, with their
primitive | back-to-the-soil pro-
gram. (It is interesting to note
that it was part of the Nazi
scheme to encourage home-

ownership among the lower-paid |

classes, in an effort to use “loss
of private property” as an anti-
Communist threat, and to tie
the workers to the state through
imposition of an economic bur-
den that the average worker
could not hope to be free of for
many years.)

in Sweden more than
are -

Today
1,000 cooperatives
housing business, maintaining
their own architectural staffs
and furniture manufacturing
plants. The Swedish govern-
ment provides generous. rent
subsidies for the working-class
homes, ranging from 80 percent
of the rent fer families with
four children up to 70 percent
for families with seven or more
children,

In many European countries
prefabricated dwellings have
been introduced. Through a
unique “build-your-own” scheme,
a family man can put up
pre-fabricated dwelling for his
family in a couple of free week-
ends. The venture is financed
-by a 90 percent long term muni-
cipal loan. The other ten per-
cent of cost is contributed \by
the homeowner through his la-
bor :

alone,

aR

: =) Feature Section 4s

SEE

IsA Depression Coming?
_ Page src nena)

5

Does Labor Want the
Moon? ee

Page _..

‘

ee etl

in the.

a 0000

HE United States was a late

starter in the housing field,
due to a deep-rooted belief that
if private enterprise were left
to
willing to work would sooner
or later possess a dream cot-
tage and live happily ever after.
But after 1829 the government
was forced to take action.

The United States Housing
Act was passed, placing respon-
sibility for local
Housing Authorities, authorizing
loans of up to 90 percent on

housing on

project costs, instituting a na-
tional subsidy. By mid-i941, 130,-
000 housing’ units had been
completed in 500 communities,
with an average rent of $12.64
per month, Through further
legislation subsidies are provid-
ed for But
while more ambitious programs
are contemplated for the future,
the U.S. still faces a formidable
housing shortage.

slum clearance.

In the Soviet Union, of course,
housing has been a question of
major.importance since the new
growth of industry after the
revolution brought — countless
thousands flocking to the cities.
The Soviet government, unlike
governments in capitalist coun-
tries, was equal to the situa-
tion. Housing programs were
written into the vast Five Year
Plans, and progress under them
has been remarkable.

A striking example of how
thoroughly the Soviet people
have the housing problem under
control was given after the Nazi
invasion, when cities left a mass
of rubble were being rebuilt

almost before the bombs stop-—

, ped falling, With a typical Sov-
iet ingenuity, new materials were
brought One village
rebuilt itself by using a mixture

into use.

itself -every...honest person _

AU
—

of local clay and rushes, and
processing the mixture into a
strong uilding material. And
the Soviet government, building
for the future, is not contenting
itself with make-shifts and the
“jerry-builts”.

ND now take a look at Can-

ada. With -our ‘vast natural
resources, our wealth of man-
power and material, not one-
government subsidized low ren-
tal housing project has been
constructed. That one statement
stands as an indictment of our
system.

No, nothing has been done
about Canadian slums. Oh yes,

through the nose, We hand out
huge sums of money through
real estate tax losses and city
service costs. But when it
comes to the more realistic ap-
proach of doing something con-
structive about housing prob-
lems, Canada has to take a
back seat among nations.

N THE first place, our hous-
ing laws are of two types.
We have laws meant to encour-
age home ownership, and laws
to regulate building. Laws of
the second type-are designed
primarily to separate residential —
and industrial areas, to keep
new buildings within civilized
standards of plumbing and
ventilation, to prevent building

of fire-traps, and so on.

All this, of course, is a good
thing. But such laws do nothing
to fill our greatest need — the
need for decent, low-rental hous-
ing. Naturally, no businessman _
will sink capital into a profitless —
venture. Yet no subsidies are
offered by either dominion, pro-
vincial or municipal govern-—

» we pay for our slums! We pay ments to encourage low-rental

housing.

At the same time, legislation |
such as National Housing Act

and Veterans Land Act have ~

fallen far short of what they |
were intended to accomplish.

In short, most housing legisla~
tion is negative in application. 4

We said before that slums are Our housing laws rule on what

bad business, that slums are-
more costly than  low-rental
housing projects. Now, this does
not mean that low-rental hous-
ing projects are profitable to in-
vestors. Reckoned in terms of
profit on capital investment,
low-rental housing does not pay.
If it did, we would have no
housing problem, because busi-
nessmen would be cutting each
other’s throats getting in on a
good thing. But from the wider,
civic angle, low-rental housing
pays for itself over and over
again.

Then what have we done in
Canada to solve the problem?
Well, we have talked a lot, for
one thing. Our government of-
ficials have shouted themselves
hoarse, the man on the street
has cursed about his landlord,
about the ~- government, about
housing in general. And actu-
ally there is a type of housing
legislation on the government
books. But just how workable is
this existing legislation.

cannot be done. No legislation
has been passed to dictate what
must be done. Laws to keep
families out of slums are use-
less unless other laws make
available places for them to
live. Complicated plans to pro-
vide loans for private building
purposes are useless if the
people with low incomes, the
ones who. need homes most,

haven’t the necessary capital in-

vestment to make the loans

available to them.

However, the whole problem
deserves a deeper consideration.
Before we can decide what
housing legislation to fight for,
and how to fight for it, we must |
have a clearer picture of the ©
situation as it now stands.

(This is the second in a
Series of articles on housing ©
by Cynthia Carter. The first
appeared in the December 20
issue, the third will be pub-
lisheq next week.) ;

FRIDAY, JANUARY 10, 1947