Housing Crisis

So, what part of the housing crisis are you more concerned about?  Are you worried about the middle class not being able to afford to buy or rent a house?  Are you concerned about young couples unable to get into the housing market?  Or are you concerned for the homeless getting shelter of any sort?  How about immigrants being able to find anywhere to live?  These are all facets of what is being billed as the housing crisis.

For example, this is the time of year when homeless people migrate to the west coast to places like Vancouver and Victoria to avoid freezing to death farther east.  This is not a new phenomenon.  I remember years ago when I lived in Victoria seeing people late in the evening huddled in store fronts along Douglas and Government Streets. 

But here is one thought about how we may alleviate some of these problems (remember there are not problems, there are only challenges).

In Pictou, Nova Scotia, there is a neighbourhood called Victory Heights.  It was built during the Second World War to house the influx of workers and their families who arrived in Pictou to work primarily in the local shipyard.  These houses were small, boxy little places largely constructed as prefabricated units.  In one form or another many are still there.  Go to almost any large or middle-class city in Canada and you will also see them.  In Peterborough, they were built to house mostly workers at the sprawling General Electric plant.  In Hamilton, it was for the steel plants and other defense industries.  And so it goes all across Canada.  All of these places were built between 1940 and 1944. Many of the remaining houses have been modernized and upgraded.  New brick or metal siding, added rooms. Some have even had a second stories added. And that is 80 years since they were first constructed as “temporary” housing.

So, does the wartime example give us an idea for dealing with the most dire parts of the crisis?  It could.  Suppose we had the political leadership to undertake this initiative and provided several thousand low-cost small housing units.  They don’t have to be single family dwellings but could be row houses or small apartment buildings but please, no high-rises that can blight a neighbourhood as witnessed by the many “projects” of the 60s and 70s which turned out to be complete social failures.  The idea would be to build these quickly with not a lot of embellishment.  What could it solve?  For the homeless, it can provide shelter of a permanent nature which can give people some hope and has shown to encourage people with mental and addiction problems to seek help and improve their lot.  For people just entering the housing market it can provide that first dwelling that they can provide a place of their own (no more adult kids in the basement?) and stability.  For immigrants it can provide a haven in their new country while they can find work and adapt to Canada.  It will also give immigrants a sense of belonging.  Success will come later.

So, whose stopping us?  Probably developers for one. They will determine that there is not enough profit in this for their stockholders.  So, give smaller contractors the opportunity to thrive.  It will take some degree of effort by all levels of government to resist developers’ lobbying, to provide the funding to get the projects started and provide monetary support, to resist Nimbyism, and to work together with each other to find solutions.  Short term support could provide long term benefits to just about everyone.  Why don’t we give it a try, not on a very small scale but on a reasonably large scale with projects in several large and small cities and towns.  It can’t be any worse than the present situation.