by Doug Smith
When one drives over Winnipeg’s Nairn Avenue overpass, it is possible to see on the northwest side of the Canadian Pacific Railway tracks a five-building, 30-unit townhouse development. This modest development, known as Triangle Gardens, was Winnipeg’s first purpose-built, low-income housing project.[1] The story of the project’s development and eventual fate is a reminder of the risks and limitations of private-sector development of low-cost housing.
In 1953, Winnipeg property owners had, in a city-wide referendum, rejected a municipal bylaw that would have authorized the city to develop two largescale public-housing projects, one in Elmwood and one in North Winnipeg. The projects, which would have provided 848 units of housing, were the result of intense lobbying from labour members of Winnipeg council and the Canadian Legion. The federal government would have contributed 75 per cent of the $8.7-million budget, the province 12.5 per cent, and the city 12.5 per cent.[2]
The City of Winnipeg Charter required that municipal expenditures of this magnitude be approved by a plebiscite. And the bar was set high: to pass, the housing proposal would have to receive the support of over sixty per cent of the people who voted. And the franchise for such a vote was limited to those who owned property in the city.[3]
The number of people whose voices were silenced by this method was substantial. The plebiscite was held in conjunction with that year’s civic election. There were no property restrictions on the right to vote for an alderman (as councilors were then termed) and nearly 57,000 people went to the polls for that October. Of these, only 27,187 could vote on the housing bylaw. And these people voted 16,873 against the housing proposal and only 10,314 in favour.[4]Thirty thousand Winnipeg tenants, the people who would be most likely to benefit from such a development had no say in the decision.
The city’s business community, particularly the Chamber of Commerce and the Real Estate Board, campaigned against the proposal.[5] This was not the first time the business community had succeeded in blocking attempts to establish public housing in Winnipeg. It had defeated a similar referendum in 1935 and in 1949 a council motion to establish a $7-million low-cost housing program was defeated by a single vote.[6] But if, as the chamber and the real estate board claimed, public housing was unacceptable, there was still no denying that the City had a severe housing problem. The City’s newspaper advertisements in favour of the proposal stated that, “Ten thousand families are now sharing accommodation in Winnipeg because they are unable to pay rent for a suitable place of their own.”[7] And costs were rising: In September 1953 rent controls that had been imposed during the Second World War were lifted in Winnipeg—with reports of some tenants being hit with 100 per cent increases in their rents.[8]
In the wake of the referendum defeat, city council asked the Greater Winnipeg Welfare Council, the predecessor to the current Social Planning Council of Winnipeg, to study housing needs.[9] The Welfare Council worked in collaboration with the University of Manitoba Planning Research Centre and Alex Robertson, the head of both the Winnipeg Supply Company and the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce, to develop a private-sector low-cost housing proposal to be developed on land that would be donated by the City.[10]
The proposal that emerged was the creation of what was termed a “limited dividend corporation” to develop a small piece of land in Elmwood next to the CPR rail line.[11] The company was called Housing Developments of Winnipeg. Since 1938 the National Housing Act had authorized the federal government to loan money to limited dividend corporations that would engage in the creation of low-income housing. The loans were generous: initially, the companies would receive loans for 80 per cent of the construction costs and the interest rate was 1.75 per cent with repayment 35-year repayment period. The company had to agree to pay its investors a dividend end of no more than five per cent on their investment—hence the name ‘limited dividend.’[12] Despite these generous terms, almost no housing was built under these provisions, and much of what was built was undertaken by service clubs.[13] In an effort to entice more companies into the field, the terms were made even more generous; by the 1950s the government was offering to loan 90 per cent of the capital costs at discount rates with an extended payback period.[14] The take up on this remained limited: in 1950 only four loans were made to limited dividend corporations, in 1951 the number increased by two. Nationally, limited dividend corporations were producing less than 100 units of housing a year.[15]
Triangle Gardens was billed as a pilot project to show how the private sector could effectively address the city’s low-income housing problems. Ninety percent of the funding came in the form of a low-interest 40-year loan from the federal government. The rest came from Housing Developments of Winnipeg, a group of investors assembled by Alex Robertson.[16] The project was designed by Wolfgang Gerson, a professor at the University of Manitoba School of Architecture, and was described as “simple and uniform,” with a budget of $255,000 that allowed for only “a bare minimum of landscaping.” Construction costs were also kept to a minimum.[17] When the project was first announced, its supporters indicated that it would target “the most needy persons known to social welfare agencies in Winnipeg.”[18]
There were concerns raised at the time. R.C. McCutchan of the Winnipeg trades council said it was time to “forget free enterprise and got low-cost housing dealt with as it should be—by subsidized housing.” The best way to do this, he said, would be to have the province repeal the requirement that gave the city’s property owners a veto over low-income housing. Mrs. E. Cook of the Congress of Canadian Women said she was disappointed with the scale of the project, calling instead for a 4,000-unit public-housing development.[19]
When the project was ready for occupancy in early 1957, the Welfare Council selected the tenants on a point system that considered family size, current living conditions, and economic situation. Families had to have a monthly income of five times the monthly rent. It was thought rents would vary from $55 a month to $76 a month.[20]
In a statement to the newspapers of the day, residents spoke highly of the project and said the rents were affordable.[21] Despite this, in 1957, Elizabeth Lord, an architect and the chair of the town planning committee of the Women’s Council of Winnipeg, noted that the Triangle Gardens rents were higher than the neediest Winnipeggers could afford, even though the project provided “the minimum decent accommodation that any family should have to take.”[22] In 1958, Alex Robertson, the head of Housing Developments of Winnipeg, acknowledged that the development “would not solve the problems of people on extremely low incomes.”[23] Free Press reporter Jim Hayes wrote in 1959 that the rents were “beyond the means of those people living in Winnipeg’s worst housing.”[24] In July 1959, Welfare Council officials wrote to the city saying that the Triangle Gardens rents were “proving too high for most of the families in the development.” A Welfare Council official said that if the city depended on the private sector, “The housing will be there, but it will not help the low-income families that need quarters in the city.”[25]
While there is no doubt that the project did increase the supply and quality of low-cost housing, even if it did not meet its original goal of supplying housing to “the most needy,” Triangle Gardens was a failure as a pilot project. In 1959, the city offered 10 acres of land in North Winnipeg to any developer willing to develop low-cost housing on the site. It could not find any takers. Mayor Steve Juba acknowledged that the city might have to go into the housing business.[26]
Triangle Gardens continued on, however, with the residents paying their rents month and slowly paying off the project’s mortgage. In 1998, 41 years after it opened Housing Developments of Winnipeg sold it for $455,000. It changed hands at least two more times in the next five years with the price reaching $735,000 in 2003. During this period, it continued to operate as rental housing until the early twenty-first century.
In February 2005, Triangle Gardens residents, one of whom had been living there for forty years, were served with eviction notices.[27] The latest owners had decided to convert Triangle Gardens, 90 per cent of which had been financed by low-cost government loans that were largely paid for by low-income renters and constructed on land that had been donated by the city, into privately owned condominiums. The units now sell for between $92,000 and $112,000, well beyond the reach of “the most needy.”[28]
The Manitoba government is currently implementing a housing policy that is based on advice provided by the international consulting firm KPMG. The central element of KPMG’s approach is that the private sector can do a better job of delivering low-cost housing than the public sector. Triangle Gardens was born of a similar rejection of public-sector for private-sector housing. It is worth remembering firstly that such private-sector housing is almost always constructed at public expense. Secondly, when it comes to real estate, the private sector must be true to its nature, which is to turn someone’s living space into someone else’s profit.
Sources
Bacher, John. Keeping to the Market: The Evolution of Canadian Housing Policy. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993.
Burley, David G. “Winnipeg’s Landscapes of Modernity, 1945–1975.” Serena Keshavjee, editor. Winnipeg Modern: Architecture, 1945-1975. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2006.
Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Economic Research Department. Housing in Canada: A Factual Summary. First Quarter, 1952, Volume 7, No, 1, 55.
Epp, Stefan. “Class, Capitalism, and Construction: Winnipeg’s Housing Crisis and the Debate over Public Housing, 1934-1939.” Histoire sociale/Social history, 43, no. 86 (2010): 393-428. doi:10.1353/his.2010.0029.
Seymour, Horace L. “The National Housing Act 1938.” Public Affairs, 2:3, March 1939, 127–131.
“Triangle Gardens Housing Project, Elwood Winnipeg, Manitoba.” Royal Architectural Institute of Canada Journal. Volume 35, Number 7, July 1958.
References
[1] David G. Burley, “Winnipeg’s Landscapes of Modernity, 1945–1975,” in Winnipeg Modern: Architecture, 1945-1975, Serena Keshavjee, editor, Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2006, 66.
[2] “Vote for the Housing By-Laws,” Winnipeg Free Press, 26 October 1953.
[3] “Motion Would Give All Voters A Voice In Money Decisions,” Winnipeg Free Press, 20 September 1949.
[4] “Civic Election Results Are Listed Poll By Poll,” Winnipeg Free Press, 29 October 1953; “Some Liked the Idea But That’s All,” Winnipeg Free Press, 29 October 1953.
[5] “Chamber Thumbs Down Housing For ‘One Group,’” Winnipeg Free Press, 23 October 1953; “Attention Ratepayers” We are OPPOSING the Housing By-law because:” Winnipeg Free Press, 26 October 1953.
[6] “Council Delays Decision on $7,000,000 Housing Plan,” Winnipeg Free Press, 20 September 1949.
[7] Stefan Epp, “Class, Capitalism, and Construction: Winnipeg’s Housing Crisis and the Debate over Public Housing, 1934-1939,” Histoire sociale/Social history, 43, no. 86 (2010), 412–415; “Vote for the Housing By-Laws,” Winnipeg Free Press, 26 October 1953412–415; “Vote for the Housing By-Laws,” Winnipeg Free Press, 26 October 1953.
[8] “City Rents Soar As Controls Go,” Winnipeg Free Press, 1 September 1953.
[9] “Pilot Housing Backed,” Winnipeg Tribune, 21 December 1955.
[10] “Limited dividend end rental plan urged,” Winnipeg Free Press, October 29, 1955; “Rent Project in Elmwood Urged to Replace Slums,” Winnipeg Tribune, 20 October 1955; Bob Metcalfe, “City Paves Way for Slum Clearance,” Winnipeg Tribune, 14 February 1956.
[11] “Rent Project in Elmwood Urged to Replace Slums,” Winnipeg Tribune, 20 October 1955.
[12] Horace L. Seymour, “The National Housing Act 1938,” in Public Affairs, 2:3, March 1939, 129.
[13] John Bacher, Keeping to the Market: The Evolution of Canadian Housing Policy, Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993, 108.
[14] “Pilot Housing Backed,” Winnipeg Tribune, 21 December 1955; “Group Wants More Land To Provide Rental Housing,” Winnipeg Free Press, 20 May 1958; John Bacher, Keeping to the Market: The Evolution of Canadian Housing Policy, Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993, 188.
[15] Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Economic Research Department, Housing in Canada: A Factual Summary, First Quarter, 1952, Volume 7, No, 1, 55.
[16] “Pilot Housing Backed,” Winnipeg Tribune, 21 December 1955; “Group Wants More Land To Provide Rental Housing,” Winnipeg Free Press, 20 May 1958; John Bacher, Keeping to the Market: The Evolution of Canadian Housing Policy, Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993, 188.
[17] “Free Land Offer Has No Takers,” Winnipeg Tribune, 15 September 1959; “Triangle Gardens Housing Project, Elwood Winnipeg, Manitoba,” Royal Architectural Institute of Canada Journal, Volume 35, Number 7, July 1958, 275–278. For budget figures, see: “Subsidized housing bid fails to halt new plan,” Winnipeg Free Press, December 8, 1955.
[18] “Rent Project in Elmwood Urged to Replace Slums,” Winnipeg Tribune, 20 October 1955.
[19] “Subsidized housing bid fails to halt new plan,” Winnipeg Free Press, December 8, 1955.
[20] “Rental Experiment Ready for Test in Elmwood.” Winnipeg Free Press, 31 January 1957.
[21] Frank Jones, “Low-Rent Tenants Satisfied,” Winnipeg Tribune, 3 August 1959.
[22] “Council of Women Asks Government Guidance To Cope with Inflation,” Winnipeg Free Press, 27 April 1957.
[23] “Urban Renewal Report Hits Two Big Snags,” Winnipeg Free Press, 17 April 1958.
[24] Jim Hayes, “Mother of Seven Finds A New Life,” Winnipeg Tribune, 24 October 1959.
[25] “Welfare Group Says Private Rents in City Are Too High,” Winnipeg Tribune, 13 July 1959.
[26] “Welfare Group Says Private Rents in City Are Too High,” Winnipeg Tribune, 13 July 1959; “Free Land Offer Has No Takers,” Winnipeg Tribune, 15 September 1959.
[27] Aldo Santin “Tenants call eviction notices illegal, vow fight,” Winnipeg Free Press, 28 February 2005.
[28] Re/Max 624 Herbert Avenue https://remax-winnipeg.com/officelistings.html/listing.1929545-624-herbert-avenue-winnipeg-r2l-1g2.90599090, accessed 18 January 2020; Realty Executives 646 Herbert Avenue http://realtyexecutivesfirstchoice.com/officelistings.html/listing.202000365-646-herbert-avenue-winnipeg-r2l-1g2.91148937 accessed 18 January 2020.