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November 1944 — Vol. 25, No. 11 —
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It is a matter for regret that in the long
march of civilization no satisfactory solution of the problem
of providing suitable shelter for families has been reached.
Housing has the most widespread effects on society, reaching
through the whole economic and social life of every community.
Upon it depends in large measure the health and happiness
of the population, and the economic welfare of the nation,
but difficulties pile themselves up into a load that invites
inertia. Persons charged with responsibility for the nation's
housing find themselves faced with questions of land values,
building regulations, tax rates, material supply, labour codes,
legal custom, financing, site planning, management, and, greatest
of all, the idiosyncracies of the people who are to inhabit
the houses. There is no simple formula, and panaceas, whether
drawn from hats magically or worked out painstakingly by reformers,
often raise false hopes which hinder permanent solution.
Canada has too few houses, while many existing houses are
unsatisfactory in hygiene and public health standards. Every
class is steadily expanding its ambitions, every generation
appreciates more than its predecessor the advantages and comforts
of a better dwelling, and new public welfare ideals have given
rise to demands for a certain minimum of good shelter for
all Canadians.
Overcrowding is the greatest of housing evils, measured
not by the number of persons to the acre but by the number
of persons to rooms. Congestion of buildings along transportation
routes in cities is inevitable, but it may be quite consistent
with satisfactory housing. Privacy and comfort are the criteria.
There must be separation of the sexes, and living space which
relieves the pressures unavoidable in the close association
of a growing family.
Though standards of housing cannot be calculated with great
precision, the census indicates one room per person as a reasonable
dividing line for requirements of health, .privacy and
convenience. Canada was suffering some overcrowding even in
1941. Crowded households comprised 7 to 28 per cent of all
households in 27 cities of over 30,000 population. The total
was about 150,000 households, including a million people,
representing 18 per cent of households and 29 per cent of
population in these cities. Overcrowding is not confined to
slum districts, but it definitely tends to drag even decent
living places into the category of slums. Figures collected
in the census indicate that adequacy of living accommodation
is closely related to income. From 4 to 60 per cent of crowded
households in these 27 cities, more than 29,000 in all, paid
less than $15 a month rent, and the average earnings of wage—earner
heads of crowded families were lower than the general average
by as much as $600 per year in some cities. Records for the
four largest cities (Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver)
indicate that less than one room per person was available
for about 61 per cent of persons at the $100 to $199 per year
earnings level; 13 per cent at the $400 to $499 level, and
3 per cent at the more than $800 level. At more than $1,000
a year the average in 27 cities is 2.1 rooms per person.
The more closely together people live, the more surely does
disease which is acquired by contact infection spread. This
applies to common colds, influenza, diphtheria, scarlet fever,
measles, infantile paralysis, pneumonia, tuberculosis, and
many others. Infant mortality is higher in crowded areas.
In Toronto as a whole the rate in 1933 was 63.4 deaths per
1,000 live births; in its seven areas of bad housing the rate
was 72.6 and for the four areas of good housing only 58.3.
In one section the rate was 121.2, almost double the rate
for all Toronto. In Glasgow, formerly one of Britain's worst—housed
cities, infant deaths in the city as a whole averaged 102.3
per thousand; but in a new housing scheme at Knightswood the
rate was only 49.4. Other factors enter in, of course. Full
credit cannot be given to housing, but it is significant,
in view of what the United Kingdom has done in the building
of better homes, that 83 per cent of the first group of men
called for military service in 1939 ranked in first—class
health, whereas in 1917—18 the corresponding percentage
was 36. Sweden, too, has a fine record. Between 1916 and 1936
tuberculosis fell about 40 per cent, and Sweden's example
in planning and equipment of dwellings sets an example hard
to beat.
The social function of housing is important. Proper building
and siting of homes should promote neighbourliness, civic
sense, architectural pleasantness and a feeling of stability.
They would advance industrial efficiency, better citizenship,
higher standards of family life, comfort, and contentment.
They would help to eliminate class hatred, social unrest,
and revolutionary propaganda, which are the accompaniments
of crowded housing. They would help reduce juvenile delinquency,
which, while not always attributable to poor housing, is its
universal attachment. According to figures given by the Canadian
Association of Social Workers, Montreal Branch, in one year
the delinquency rates per 10,000 population in Montreal were
15.5 for the bad housing wards compared with 1.17 in Westmount,
1.7 in Notre Dame de Grace and .84 for Mount Royal. In
Toronto that same year 43 per cent of the city's juvenile
court cases came from three poor housing districts.
All political parties are agreed on the need for housing
as a major activity in the programme of reconstruction. The
Deputy Minister of Finance, Dr. W. C. Clark, estimated in
1936 that Canada required 50,000 houses a year to maintain
shelter for its people.
It is no solution, said the Montreal report of 1935, to
put forward schemes for slum clearance with replacement of
dwellings which rent at $5 a room per month, because these
houses will only cause slums to arise elsewhere to shelter
people who cannot afford to pay more than $2.50 a room. There
seems to be agreement that the average family, particularly
at the lower levels of income, should not devote more than
a fifth of its income to rent, which means that the lower
third of tenant families could afford to pay only $11.72 a
month. The actual rents paid by this group in 1941 averaged
$19 a month, half as much again as they could properly afford
for rent. The Advisory Committee on Reconstruction dealing
with Housing reached the conclusion that between three—quarters
and four—fifths of the lower third of tenant families
must depend upon publicly—financed low—rental housing
if they are to get proper accommodation, and that this housing
must rent for $12.50 a month or less. The 1941 housing census
revealed that 92 per cent of Montreal's low income families,
and 93 per cent of Toronto's, pay more than 20 per cent of
their total family income for shelter.
People talk a great deal about possibilities for saving
in the construction of housing, but it has been estimated
that a saving of 25 per cent in the erection of a dwelling
will result in less than 10 per cent reduction in rent. This
is a useful saving, but it is not sufficient to solve the
housing problem. While hourly rates for skilled construction
workers seem high when contrasted with the rates of pay for
semi—skilled and unskilled labour in manufacturing, they
are not out of line with the wages paid other highly skilled
workers, and it must be remembered that the annual earnings
of construction workers are adversely affected by the seasonal
nature of their employment. Some people blame the cost of
financing for the dearth of new houses, but the Deputy Minister
of Finance considers this a mistaken view: "There is farmore
room for legitimate saving in the modernization of construction
methods, the improvement of public attitudes and regulations,
and the correction of wasteful methods of land utilization
than there is in the cost of financing. Moreover, much of
the alleged excessive cost of financing is merely the natural
and inevitable result of unsound and wasteful procedures."
The house construction industry needs some internal adjustment.
The Minister of Finance told Parliament this year: "One of
the great weaknesses in the house—building industry in
Canada is the absence of a substantial number of companies
with competent management and with sufficiently large resources
to acquire large blocks of land, and to develop such areas
in a comprehensive way providing all necessary community and
incidental services." The provision of dwellings is just now
evolving from the artisan stage to machine age practices.
The welfare of the construction industry throughout this transition
is important not only to those engaged in the industry itself,
but to the whole national economy. House builders are not,
as some demagogues would have the people believe, innately
malicious, imposing high prices to keep people from building
houses except at great expense and with great profit to the
industry. The building contractor does not like, any better
than another business man, to lay off his workers in winter
or in slack periods. But individual builders are caught in
a web of complex relationships with manufacturers, dealers,
labourers and buyers. Instead of the integration which would
make for cheaper houses and more steady employment, there
is lack of standardization, with attendant localization of
operations, and backwardness in technology. Dr. Clark remarked
that the building industry is relatively unchanged in form
of organization and in technical processes from that which
catered to our forefathers prior to the Industrial Revolution.
"During a period," he said, "when machine production, standardization,
and technological advance have been revolutionizing every
other important manufacturing process, the building of houses
has remained a localized, handicraft process."
In the immediate post—war period this industry will
be called upon to carry responsibility for large—scale
immediate employment. The building of houses does not mean
work merely for carpenters, brick—layers, plumbers and
other construction artisans. An estimate has been made that
the labour value of a building dollar is about 75 cents when
the off—site employment is considered. A study made for
the Department of Finance revealed that 1.3 man hours of work
had been provided in auxiliary industries for every man hour
worked on the sites of 25,000 housing units.
It has been estimated that Canada's minimum housing need
after the war will call for the erection of 50,000 to 100,000
units in the first post—war year, and of 700,000 in the
first ten years. If the first post—war year should be
1946, the actual accumulated need for new urban housing units
would be 500,000, according to the Committee on Housing and
Community Planning. A twenty—year programme is advocated,
to provide about two—thirds of the actual needs.
Rural housing is a problem all by itself, and deserves separate
treatment. The situation is less serious than in urban centres
so far as quantity is concerned, but poor farm housing can
have an important adverse effect upon the economy of Canada.
It was pointed out in a recent National Farm Radio Forum that
young people cannot be expected to make their homes on the
farm unless those homes are provided with the conveniences
now found in even the most modest town and city dwelling.
"Boys are leaving the farm because they will not bring their
brides into the homes, and daughters have the same problem,"
one of the speakers said. "More than that, if we ever hope
to solve the farm labour problem we have got to provide living
conditions so the young farm helper can marry and raise a
family under his own roof." This would call for the erection
on every farm of an extra cottage for the hired man or married
son.
All the predisposing causes of inadequate housing became
focused in the first years of war, and the resulting crisis
threw the Dominion Government into a position of leadership
in provision of low—rent houses for war workers. Wartime
Housing Ltd. is the Government's authority for this work.
It has built two types of houses, hostels, staff houses, dining
halls, schools, and special buildings, It is proposed to take
down and sell these buildings after the war, but there will
be a problem in the absorption elsewhere of some 70,000 persons
who now inhabit them. Many of the industries, to serve which
the houses were built, will be turned to peacetime production,
and there will be a tendency for the houses to remain in use.
Once dwellings are erected and occupied they become part of
the community, and they will probably be used as long as they
are better than the worst.
One great difficulty crops up to plague administrators in
cities where low—cost housing is provided with the aid
of subsidies. Since the poorest houses provided by the administrators
will contain bathrooms, hot and cold water, and weather resisting
qualities, it is apparent that people moving into these houses
will automatically obtain better accommodation than a big
proportion of the rest of the population. In the nature of
things, the better—class workman would not be among those
to occupy the first houses, and would find himself in poorer
accommodation than his less competent neighbour, while, at
the same time, he would be contributing through taxation to
the establishment of conditions for others which he could
not obtain for himself.
The Dominion Government does not accept the views of those
who believe that municipalities should engage in a vast programme
of state housing financed largely by Dominion Government funds.
Housing is placed by the British North America Act under provincial
jurisdiction, but the Federal Government has been making financial
provision to encourage building and renovation of houses over
a period of many years. In fact, in 1919 and in 1938 legislative
provision for help to housing seems to have been ahead of
public opinion and of technical preparation. Between 1930
and 1937, under a policy of encouraging money—lending
for housing, only 2.8 houses per 100 families were erected,
whereas in England and Sweden in the same period the number
of houses built by unassisted private enterprise alone was
16.5 and 26.3 per hundred families respectively. Up to July
this year the government had made 21,839 loans amounting to
more than $87 million and providing accommodation for 26,443
families, with a net loss to the government under both the
Dominion and National Housing Acts of only $970. Under the
Home Improvement Loans Guarantee Act of 1937 there were 125,720
loans for modernization of existing homes, totalling nearly
$50 million, on which the net loss represents a percentage
of .806. The 1944 National Housing Act provides for the
construction of houses by home owners, construction for rental
purposes and slum clearance, rural housing, loans for modernization,
housing research, and other matters pertaining to rehousing.
Prefabrication has been much talked of, but the movement
is still in its infancy. Prefabrication simply means that
all possible parts are made in a factory in comparatively
large units as nearly as possible in their finished form.
These may be rapidly assembled on the site without cutting
and fitting. Students of the subject are convinced that no
greater saving than 15 per cent can be anticipated, and this
has been confirmed by actual American experience. The future
of this kind of house seems to lie in the $2,000 to $3,500
price range, although there is no reason why prefabrication
should not be applied to the interior fittings of many more
expensive buildings.
People do not want radical ideas in housing. They have no
desire for sliding walls and rooms which can be extended by
the mere pulling of a zipper. What is wanted first of all
is a house in which each family can live. People who have
been in rooming houses and wartime barracks are not going
to wait for glamorous plastic interiors at low cost. All they
want are the simple luxuries of space and privacy. A study
in the United States reported that there should be sufficient
space and number of rooms according to size, age and sex of
the family to meet their needs for being together and for
being alone, safe play space for children indoors and out,
and a socially wholesome neighbourhood. The present minimum
for a living room in Britain is 180 square feet, and the Royal
College of Physicians has recommended that this be raised
to 200 or 250 square feet.
Some very interesting housing projects have been carried
out in Europe. Splendid value is provided by British agencies,
for the most part on a strictly business basis. This is achieved
by corporate ownership and collective management, with large—scale
operations. Britain's experiments with "garden cities" have
been of interest to all the world. As early as the beginning
of the 19th century Robert Owen was running a successful cotton
mill in Scotland, giving his workers shorter hours, higher
wages, education, good working conditions and a well planned
village. Port Sunlight, the Lever Bros. project, was started
in 1887, and Bourneville, the Cadbury garden village, arose
in the 1890's. One of the striking modern developments is
at Letchworth, England. This is not only a well laid out garden
city, but a paying concern, organized as a Joint Stock Company
in 1903. After 35 years in existence a survey showed that
the industrial workers at Letchworth lost only half as many
days through sickness as did workers in other English industrial
towns. The death rate for all England was 50 per cent higher,
the infant mortality rate 84 per cent higher and the tuberculosis
rate 100 per cent higher than at Letchworth.
In whatever scheme may be devised for providing housing
the tenants have a responsibility as well as the budders or
landlords. A tenant who is careless penalizes himself because
the landlord is compelled to establish rents which will meet
excess costs of maintaining property. If he cannot get the
rent required to cover the expense then the result is that
he refuses to make repairs or he rejects as tenants people
he considers undesirable. Greater stability in occupancy,
more careful treatment of property, and regularity of rent
payments would enable landlords to reduce rent charges to
some extent. It is well known that some families would make
slums out of good houses because of a destructive tendency
arising out of ignorance or carelessness. It is only one of
the problems of rehousing to educate such people so that they
may rise to the level of improved environment. A partial solution
has been found in Holland, where a society of tenants obtains
a certificate from the government, draws up plans for a housing
project and obtains a loan from the town. The society is allowed
50 years to repay the amount advanced for building, and 75
years for the amount expended on land. These tenant societies
have been very successful, managing their properties efficiently
and democratically. They have paid their way without any government
subsidy, and they do not even ask for tax exemption.
There is a great handicap placed upon construction in Canada
by reason of the taxation system which levies rates on houses
according to their assessed value. As a result a considerable
part of the rent of working—class families goes, not
toward paying for their dwellings, but toward meeting the
general expenses of the local government. It must be admitted
that real estate taxation operates as a regressive tax, so
that the lower the income the higher the proportion that goes
in municipal taxation. It almost seems as if an exhaustive
study and revamping of the tax system in its relation to home
ownership would be a first requirement of any constructive
rehousing programme. Some cities, dependent for their revenues
mainly on the real estate tax, have raised assessments and
rates until they have become so high that new construction
has been discouraged, and in many places stopped altogether.
Any rehousing project must face the problem of local building
codes. If up—to—date structural methods and modern
materials could be used freely there might be considerable
economy in construction. The Montreal Board of Trade report
commented that the building by—laws of Montreal leave
little room for ingenuity in design or the application of
modern methods. It is frequently argued that the multiplicity
of building regulations provides a major cause of excessive
cost. Dr. Clark has expressed the hope that "with the co—operation
of the National Research Council we may be able to devise
a model building code which will prove at least a guide to
municipal governments." Some authorities have estimated that
the differences in local building codes create a variance
of as much as $350 in the cost of the average house.
In all the building that will have to be done to meet immediate
needs and keep up the supply of houses, private enterprise
must be encouraged to take the largest possible share of responsibility,
while governments of all levels play their parts in a housing
programme particularly designed to meet the needs of the lower
income classes. There is ample room for both. Private enterprise
will probably find its greatest opportunity in large—scale
projects which give scope for economical construction and
maintenance. It should be possible, with these economies and
through improved construction methods, to extend the housing
provided by private enterprise downward to take in many groups
for whom it is not feasible to provide by present methods,
though there will always be some in the community unable by
any means to provide for their own housing needs.
Housing is more than a local problem, although of course
it affects the community most closely. Because of its health
and employment features it impinges upon the whole life of
the nation. It is part of Democracy, which implies a continuing
effort toward the goal of equal opportunity for health, decency,
and normal family life. In these days, much more is comprehended
than just shelter; a certain standard is being accepted as
minimum. To achieve it will require not only the efforts of
architects, financiers, builders and the several governments,
but education of the public. Citizens' committees could be
established now to formulate plans for communities, survey
the needs, and start informing the public. In the long run,
education, good management, and popular representation in
community affairs will be the most lasting means of improvement,
the surest safeguards against blight that threatens whole
neighbourhoods, and against the recurrence of housing conditions
which are universally regarded as inadequate if not actually
dangerous to the health, morale and general well—being
of the people of Canada.
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