From Justice to Profit

Funding Housing for the good of society

Social housing refers to affordable housing that is: Publicly-owned and funded; or, Publicly-supported non-profit and co-operative

housing

Often known as Affordable housing, its policy tools include: Rent supplements for market rental housing

units The use of rent controls; Regulations that protect the existing rental

housing stock Regulations that encourage or subsidize the

development of new rental housing stock

From 1953 to 1993, government funded social housing

Vancouver has suffered from a housing shortage ever since its inception on unceded Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Watuth territory in the mid C19th

Post WW 1 “insufficient and poor housing represents one of the chief causes of industrial unrest across Canada”

1919 Better Housing Act: Better housing would ease social unrest and “help maintain a healthier, more efficient work-force”

During the Depression the city’s relief rolls triple; the homeless and unemployed are routinely arrested and imprisoned

Vancouver housing construction plummets, but population growth continues. Result: another acute housing shortage

1934 Bruce report recognizes “the responsibility of the community to provide satisfactory dwellings for those who are too poor to afford them”

May 11, 1938, sixteen hundred demonstrators occupy the Georgia Hotel, the main post office, and the art gallery

June 19, 1938, “Bloody Sunday”, police beat and tear gas protestors

Premier Duff Patullo refuses to make any concessions to the protestors, but demands the restoration of relief funds

Prime Minister King: relief is a provincial responsibility

Result: no low-income housing constructed

low-income residents endure “slum conditions of the worst kind” right through the Second World War

Housing so scarce that council halts an effort to “clean up” the waterfront by evicting dwellers of waterfront shacks and squats: complete lack of alternative shelter

30s: Clusters of squatters homes in False Creek squat is known as “Bennettville”

1949: 866 shacks along the foreshore

Most ‘shackers’ evicted by the Harbours Board in 1959

90 North Shore shacks, housing Malcolm Lowry and others associated with poets Earle Birney, Dorothy Livesay and Al Purdy

One occupied by artists Al Neil and Carole Itter, evicted Feb. 2015

1958 some shacks burned by the District of North Vancouver

Feb. ‘41 Wartime Housing Limited houses shipyard and Boeing workers: : first rental housing in Greater Vancouver

May 1944 evictions: families living in tents, evictions of war widows. Street rallies and picket lines spring up in protest

July ‘45 evictions suspended, but housing sold off in 194

Jan ’46 Veterans Occupy Hotel Vancouver

Sept. ‘46 Veterans Occupy former army barracks on Little Mountain

1946: “the federal government is morally responsible for helping to rehabilitate demobilized service personnel”; CMHC founded “to house returning war veterans and to lead the nation's housing programs”

1947 veteran’s housing built along 4th and on Broadway

1947 Renfrew Heights

1948 Fraserview Subdivision

1953 Little Mountain: first public housing

1968 : “All Canadians have a right to be adequately housed whether they can afford it or not” (Canadian Welfare Council)

Feb. 1973, minority Trudeau government introduces measures to “stimulate home buying and home and neighbourhood rehabilitation”

Federal assistance provides for 40% of all housing starts in the 1970s

Ron Barford: “good housing at a reasonable cost is a social right of every citizen of this country…that must be our objective, our obligation, our goal”

‘79 – ’85: 40,000 units of co-op housing nation-wide

Support for homeowners and developers = $8 billion; social housing support = $700 million

1983 MacDonald Commission: “greater reliance on ‘market forces’”

1986 CMHC’s start-up funding for low-income housing drops to 8%

1992: federal funding for co-op housing cut: “the government wants to help people buy homes”

1993 all affordable housing funding cut, responsibility for housing downloaded to the provinces

2009 Little Mountain sold

Canada now the only OECD country without a national housing program

‘97 – ‘01, federal spending on housing 10% of GDP, lowest since ‘30s

1990: Frances Street Squat

2002: Woodward’s occupation (Woodsquat)

2004 Science World protest

2011 Occupy

2015 Oppenheimer park protest

incentives for the development of new market rental increasing densityzoning changes (secondary suits and laneway housing)waiving development cost levies on rental units funding for new social housing units, including replacing

SROs

The Affordability gap2006, average renter pays $334/month more than they

can afford = $4,0005/yearAffordability gap $141 million 27.0% of core need renters have affordability problem

“the violation of the right to adequate housing in Canada is clearly the result of explicit legislative choices rather than a lack of resources”