By Doug Smith
Winnipeggers of mature demeanour have grown up with the knowledge that certain types of houses, typically small one- and one-and-a-half story bungalows, surrounded by other houses of the same design, are “wartime housing.” Blocks of them can be found in most older areas of the city. If pressed, these Winnipeggers could probably tell you that these houses were built during the Second World War. But few could tell more about these houses than that—and even that would be wrong. All of Winnipeg’s wartime housing was actually built after the cessation of hostilities.
The story of the Wartime Housing Limited, which was created as a national Crown corporation in February 1941, is one of the great might-have-beens in the history of Canadian social housing. By the war’s end in August 1945, it had built 16,869 units of housing.[1] Construction of Wartime Housing continued on into the late 1940s, and the corporation could have served as the basis for a national public-housing agency. Instead, the housing was sold off, the corporation merged with the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, and the National Housing Act was amended to, theoretically, allow for the tri-partite government funding of public housing. Those amendments were not fit for purpose and little public housing was built under their provisions
It was not until December 1945 that construction was completed on the first of nearly 2,000 units of Wartime Housing that were to be built in Winnipeg. In addition, Wartime Housing was built in most of the surrounding municipalities including East Kildonan, Fort Garry, St. Boniface, St. James, and Transcona.[2] Every expansion of the number of Wartime Housing homes in Winnipeg was the subject of heated debate and all the houses were built over the opposition of the local property development industry.[3] The industry had good reason to oppose Wartime Housing: the reality of state-built and administered low-cost housing would inspire a fifteen-year campaign to have the city build and operate its own public-housing projects.
The immediate impetus for the creation of Wartime Housing Limited was the need to house people employed in war-related industries. With the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, the Canadian government invested dramatically in munitions plants, shipbuilding, and aircraft construction. By February 1941, there were, for example, 13,500 people employed in munitions plants in Hamilton and it was expected that the workforce would swell to 20,000 by the end of the year. The workforce in Valcartier, Quebec, was expected to go from 2,700 to 11,000 in the same period.[4] But since the start of the Great Depression in 1929, house and apartment building in Canada had proceeded at a snail’s pace. Even before the start of the war in 1939, it was increasingly common to find two families “doubling up” and occupying a single house. And little had been spent on maintaining housing, particularly rental housing, over the previous decade. There was, according to one government estimate, a need for 10,000 homes at the start of the war.[5] Federal finance department officials initially hoped that the civilian population would just double-up and carry on.[6] But by late 1940, workers were quitting munitions work because they could not find homes for their families while plants in remote communities were having trouble recruiting employees.[7] Government action on housing was, in other words, prompted by the needs of national security.
In February 1941, C.D. Howe, the federal minister of Munitions and Supply (and more commonly referred to as the ‘minister of everything’ in Mackenzie King’s wartime cabinet), surmounted Finance Department opposition to create Wartime Housing. He recruited Hamilton construction executive Joseph Piggott to run the corporation for a dollar a year and mandated it to build temporary housing for workers in war-related industries. This was a significant shift from previous federal policy which held that housing should be left to the private sector.[8] Wartime Housing projects were built on land it bought, land it received from municipalities, and land the federal government-owned. Local builders and architects developed the projects according to national designs with construction being carried out on semi-prefabricated basis. A typical story-and-a-half Wartime House had three bedrooms, a living room, and kitchen in 957 square feet.[9]
Rents were set at $20 and $30 a month based on the size of the house. These are low figures by today’s standards, but the rents covered the federal government’s costs and were within reach of the war industry workers for whom the houses were being built. Truly low-income housing would have been priced between $12 and $20 a month. In this sense, Wartime Housing was akin to what is termed “affordable housing” today.[10]
Wartime Housing was not without its critics. The Department of Finance, which believed that the construction of permanent housing should be left to the private sector, insisted that Wartime Houses be “temporary” in nature. To ensure their temporary nature, Finance required that the houses be built without basements and be heated with stoves.[11] (This measure proved a failure: after the war basements were added, the houses renovated, and many are still occupied to this day.) The construction industry objected to the fact that Wartime Housing was given privileged access to scarce building materials and worried that the corporation might continue to dominate house building in the post-war era.[12]
There was also criticism from the left. The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (the forerunner to today’s New Democratic Party) commended the government for initiating the wartime housing program but objected to the low-cost and temporary nature of the housing. [13] The CCF would have preferred to see the National Housing Act amended to provide 90 percent mortgages on houses valued at $3,500 or less. (Up until then the benefits of the National Housing Act had been reserved for the purchasers of more expensive housing.)[14] Saskatchewan CCF member of parliament A.M. Nicholson questioned both the quality and cost of the housing built by Wartime Housing.[15] In his first speech as national leader of the CCF, M.J. Coldwell called for the government to begin planning a post-war housing program and accused Wartime Housing of building “so-called homes, the unit cost of which is atrocious, and which will become slum areas.”[16] (The CCF’s criticism of the cost of the construction of Wartime Housing appears to have been off the mark since it did not take into account additional development costs that Wartime Housing assumed.)[17] As late as November 1945, Winnipeg CCF MP Alistair Stewart was condemning wartime housing as potential slums.[18]
Wartime Housing got off to a quick start. One month after its establishment in February 1941, the corporation was assembling prefabricated demonstration homes in Ottawa in nine hours, at a cost of $1,500. By the summer contracts had been let for the construction of 2,000 houses in ten Canadian cities.[19]
Wartime Housing in Winnipeg in wartime
At the start of the war, Winnipeg had a severe housing shortage: 15 per cent of the city’s households were doubled up, 19 per cent were living in what was described as overcrowded conditions, and 36 per cent were living in substandard buildings.[20] But the housing crisis was not attributable to war-related industry, and the city did not qualify for wartime housing.[21] And initially, Winnipeg did not want them. Having inspected Wartime Housing cities, Winnipeg mayor, and former 1919 General Strike leader, John Queen did not want them in Winnipeg.[22] “Why,” he asked, “in the face of the great housing shortage should we sanction construction of houses to be pulled down in a couple of years?”[23]
The crisis only intensified as the war continued. The crisis intensified every spring when the federally imposed wintertime ban on evictions ended. As May 1, 1942, approached, Winnipeg’s social agencies were besieged by families in search of housing. In what was described as the most serious housing crisis in the city’s history, between 300 and 400 households were expected to lose their homes. Enforcement of the city’s public health laws would likely have led to the eviction of at least 6,000 families.[24]
But when Howe announced in 1942 that Wartime Housing was going to shift from building housing for war workers to addressing the larger urban housing shortage, Queen had no option but to pursue a deal. The city quickly commenced negotiations with the federal government for the construction of 500 wartime homes. Queen promised that these new homes would be permanent and have basements.[25] After visiting Winnipeg, Wartime Housing staff recommended that 600 houses be built to address the serious housing shortages in Winnipeg and St. Boniface [26]
But the federal government never finalized the deal, and the housing was never built.[27] What happened? Finance department officials, ever zealous in their protection of the private construction sector, were horrified at Howe and Piggott’s plans to expand into the realm of social housing, in part because it might prove too popular. One federal official characterized Piggott’s approach as “dangerous” and warned that it could be the beginning of “the socialization of all our housing.”[28] Finance minister J.L. Isley worried that WHL might supplant the private sector and serve as a model for a type of post-war housing that he opposed.[29] Lending institutions, private developers, and building supply firms all lined up to oppose any extension of Wartime Housing into the production of permanent homes.[30] By late 1942 Finance had won the battle, and Wartime Housing Limited was told to limit construction to meeting the housing needs of workers employed in war-related production. Piggott privately told the Wartime Housing board of directors that his approach had been blocked by “loan companies, builders, lumber companies, and others.”[31]
Piggott did live to fight another day. In 1943, the federal government was talking about winding down the Wartime Housing. But the national housing crisis remained unaddressed. In May 1944, left without any real options, the federal government expanded Wartime Housing’s mandate to allow it to build housing for the families of people serving in the armed forces.[32] Piggott, still alarmed by the extent of need across the country, recommended in the spring of 1945 that Wartime Housing build 30,000 more homes over the next three years.[33] Howe, for whom, as journalist Blair Fraser once wrote, “No abstract principle was as important as Getting Things Done,” supported the plan.[34] It was, under the provisions of this program, that Winnipeg’s Wartime Houses were constructed.
Postwar Wartime Housing Winnipeg
In January 1945 Winnipeg City Council approved its first agreement for the construction of Wartime Housing in the city. Eight families began moving into the first housing built under this agreement in December of that year.[35] In September 1947, a family that had been living in the city’s former relief building at 981 Elgin Street moved into 702 Rosedale Avenue, the one-thousandth wartime house to be built in the city.[36] By July 1947, there were 1,900 Wartime Houses in the city.[37]
There was no question that as the war neared its end, there was an ever-growing need for more housing in Winnipeg. In 1944 Percy Pickering, who had taken over from Alexander Officer as Winnipeg’s chief housing inspector two years earlier and was possibly emboldened by the fact that he because he was a year away from retirement, told Winnipeg’s Board of Trade (the equivalent of today’s Chamber of Commerce), that the city faced a looming housing disaster. “If you could see, as I have, women with husbands overseas, crying because they could not find a home, and hear the expressions of men on leave from active service—you would realize that action is past due.” There was, he said, nothing being done to prepare for the inevitable post-war housing crisis. Not only was low-cost housing in short supply, but the houses that did exist were also often dilapidated and unfit for occupancy.
Overcrowding is rife, the plumbing fixtures are inadequate. There are gas ranges in practically every room and the odors, especially in winter, due to the lack of ventilation, are often nauseating. We provide these children with milk and facilities at school for their well-being and then allow them to reside in what one may term, without exaggeration, a hovel.[38]
That year the city had spent $70,000 of the surplus in the Winnipeg Housing Commission account to build sixteen low-costs homes, six in Fort Rouge, four in the West End, and six in the North End. (The Housing Commission had been established at the end of the First World War to administer a federal loan program. By the 1940s it did little more than collect payment on mortgages issued two decades earlier.) While there had been thought of the city renting the houses, in the end, the decision was made to sell the homes.[39]
The construction of sixteen houses was simply a drop in the bucket. James Black, the head of the city’s housing committee feared that when the wintertime freeze on evictions was lifted in the spring of 1944, the city would be overwhelmed. He told council that “People have been phoning me while holding eviction papers in their hands. What are we going to do with them?” There was, he said, one family with seven children that would soon be on the street. The chair of the city’s finance committee, C.E. Simonite, told Black that this was not really the city’s problem: “There are too many citizens who would love to weep on the shoulder of a kind-hearted alderman like Ald. Black or camp on the mayor’s doorstep and let the city handle their problems for nothing.”[40]
As noted above the prospect of a wave of evictions had spooked the federal government as well in 1944, leading it to instruct Wartime Housing to initiate a national construction program of homes for returned service personnel.[41] The City of Winnipeg was quick to ask that 100 of these homes be built in Winnipeg.[42] By early 1945 council and Wartime Housing had reached an agreement for the construction of at least 100 houses in the working-class community of Elmwood. The houses were to be leased to service personnel or their dependents, cost approximately $3,000 to build, and rent for between $22 and $30. The Free Press estimated that similar private-sector housing would cost $40 a month or more. Wartime Housing would build and maintain the houses on serviced land provided by the city. Wartime Housing would make a payment of between $24 and $30 in lieu of property taxes.[43] Winnipeg city council approved the agreement by an 11-to-6 vote that laid bare the divisions that would emerge every time Wartime Housing came up for debate at council. With the exception of Jack Blumberg, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation councillors voted for the measure, the communist councillors were unanimous in its favour, while the Civic Election Committee councillors, members of the Liberal-Conservative Coalition that had dominated municipal politics since 1919, were split on the issue.[44]
While ideological differences played a significant role in the debate over Wartime Housing, the conflict was often framed as a battle royale between C.E. Simonite, the chair of the finance and H.B. Scott, Black’s successor as chair of the housing committee, both of whom were members of the Civic Election Committee. Charles Simonite had been born in Paris, Ontario, in 1879, moving to Manitoba with his parents the following year. He went into the real-estate business in the early years of the twentieth century and eventually served as the chair of the real estate board and was recruited to run for council in the late 1920s when “a number of Winnipeg business and professional men were asked to run in the civic election on a slate promising sound business practices.” He served on council from 1930 to 1955 with one two-year break, spending seventeen years as chair of the finance committee. As a private entrepreneur, he played a significant role in developing housing along Churchill Drive in the post-war period. As his obituary stated, he was a “firm believer in private enterprise and private initiative.”[45] Not surprisingly, Simonite viewed Wartime Housing as an unneeded and potentially distorting intrusion in the private real-estate market, rarely missing an opportunity to speak against it.
H.B. Scott, who took over from James Black as the chair of the housing committee in 1945, served on council for sixteen years, being defeated in 1958. From 1953 to 1958 he was also a Conservative member of the provincial legislature.[46] He was no shrinking violet. An advertisement for his 1943 campaign for council proclaimed that he was “independent, representing all the people and is under no compulsion to flatter any group.” In fact, he said he was “fearless,” having spent the years between election campaigns denouncing “things which appeared wrong to him and championed the cause of the sufferers from and the victims thereof.”[47] The operator of a bakery on Sargent Avenue, a few blocks from his home on Sherbrook Street, he had run for council four times without success before finally being elected in 1942.[48] In his role as the chair of the housing committee, he emerged as a dogged advocate of Wartime Housing and C.E. Simonite’s personal nemesis. In describing one debate, a Free Press editorialist wrote that “Alderman Scott, sniffing suspiciously at each cloud of rhetoric as it drifted past his nose, smelt a dark plot against his wartime housing babies in all this. He snarled like a she-wolf defending her young.” Mayor Garnet Coulter once felt obliged to admonish both Scott and Simonite for the use of what a Tribune reporter described as “fighting words” in a debate over Wartime Housing.[49] Scott claimed that at one point, Simonite’s vocal opposition led Wartime Housing to cancel the development of an additional 300 homes in Winnipeg, while the Winnipeg Tribune hailed Scott as the “man of the hour,” when he had the federal commitment reinstated.[50]
Scott scandalized his opponents when he warned that returning service personnel might take to the streets if they felt the city was ignoring their housing needs. He reminded his critics that Canadian soldiers and sailors had rioted in Aldershot in Britain and Halifax out of frustration with years of military discipline and the slow return to civilian life.[51] Councillors were also well aware that veterans had occupied the old Hotel Vancouver in 1946 to protest the lack of post-war housing in that city.[52]
While the CCF councillors tended to vote in favour of the construction of Wartime Housing, Jack Blumberg, one of the most respected members of their caucus, was, at best, a tepid supporter of Wartime Housing. Born in England, Blumberg immigrated to Winnipeg in 1910, worked as a streetcar motorman, served overseas during the First World War, and was active in the One Big Union. First elected to council as a labour candidate in 1919, he served until 1956.[53] Blumberg recognized that Wartime Housing was better than nothing, but he would have preferred to see the government build larger, more permanent housing. As he put it, “I don’t care how you paint it, a shack is still a shack.”[54]
Jacob Penner, the leading (and often lone) Communist member on the council, was a steadfast supporter of Wartime Housing, and paradoxically often sounded a much more ‘pragmatic’ (and less ‘communist’) note than Blumberg. Born in Ukraine, Penner had immigrated to Canada in 1904. A florist by trade, he was a founding member of the Communist Party of Canada. First elected to represent a North End ward on Winnipeg city council in 1933, he served, with some interruptions, the most significant being the 22 months he spent in a Canadian government internment camp during the Second World War, until his retirement in 1961.[55]
Penner worried that if faced with demands for larger houses with basements, Wartime Housing would simply forego building houses in Winnipeg altogether.[56] “We are not,” he said, “in a position to say to the Dominion government ‘Give us ideal houses or none at all.’”[57]
Perhaps the most vocal and successful proponents of Wartime Housing were the representatives of the people who would benefit from them: the veterans’ organizations. The local chapter of the British Empire Service League and the local veterans’ welfare committee supported the city’s initial request for Wartime Housing.[58] Major-General C.B. Price, the national president of the Canadian Legion, applauded the construction of Wartime Housing in Winnipeg saying: “These houses are wonderful accommodation for people in the lower income bracket.” In doing so, he made the case for the knock-on social benefits of housing. “Through more and more of these homes, we can lower the population in hospitals and jails. Children do not have to be cramped in small quarters and are brought up in a healthier way in the new homes.”[59]
The returned veterans were seen belonging to the ‘deserving poor’—who quite clearly were being failed by the current housing market. The Tribune editorialized for example that “For a young veteran to saddle himself with the payments needed to purchase a very average bungalow, selling in Winnipeg today at $7,500, would be most unwise, even if he could raise the $2,500 or $3,000 cash payment required.”[60] While Simonite claimed that veterans with large incomes were living in Wartime Housing, in 1947 seventy-five per cent of the 217 households allocated Wartime Housing in early 1947 earned less than $150 a month.[61] The Free Press profiled three of the households on the waiting list at that time.
Case No. 1 One child. Three people living in two rooms in a lodging house. The rooms are separated from each other. Meals are cooked on a community stove in a hallway. All tenants in the house share a common bathtub and toilet. The man was overseas three years, six months. He earns $125 per month. He pays $25 per month for the two rooms.
Case No. 2 — Two children, a third expected. The family is living in one room on the ground floor of’ an old terrace in the centre of the city. They share a bathroom and toilet on the second floor with other tenants in the house. Meals are cooked on a gas stove in their room. Rental is $15 per month. The veteran, who was three years overseas service, earns $140 per month.
Case No. 3 – Two children. The family occupies a three-roomed housing in a heavy industrial area, next door to a coal yard and a gas works. The house has been condemned by the city health department, which has advised the family to leave as the landlord refuses to repair the house. There is no bath, only a toilet. Rental is S10 per month. The veteran earns $35 per week, is a pensioner, was wounded overseas. [62]
The demand for housing intensified as troops began to return home. Army representatives told a regional conference on social work in Winnipeg in October 1945 that the housing conditions in Winnipeg were “worse than inadequate,” with every second returning serviceman “facing a difficult housing problem.”[63] In November 1945 the armed forces were discharging 1,200 men a month for Winnipeg. [64]
If veterans favoured bringing wartime housing to Winnipeg, the local construction industry was firm in its opposition. In reflecting on his years as the chairperson of the housing committee, CEC councillor James Black commented that every time someone attempted to do something about housing in Winnipeg “the Lumber Dealers’ association sends a communication to Ottawa objecting.”[65] In July 1945 the Western Retail Lumberman’s association lobbied the federal government to discontinue Wartime Housing, claiming the private sector could build housing as quickly and efficiently.[66] The breadth of the business community’s opposition to Wartime Housing was captured by the claim of A.H. Brett, the manager of the Greater Winnipeg Lumber Dealers Association, to speak on behalf of the Greater Winnipeg Lumber Dealers’ Association, the Building Materials Association, the National Home Builder’s Association, the Greater Winnipeg House Dealers’ Association, the Winnipeg Home Builders’ Association, the Winnipeg Home Home-owners’ Association, and somewhat surprisingly, the Building Trades’ Council and the Winnipeg Trades and Labour Council, when he opposed Wartime Housing at a council meeting. (A Free Press columnist later said that he appeared to be representing “Everyone but the Sons and Daughters of ‘I Will Arise.’”) [67] In response to the private homebuilders’ charge that Wartime Housing did not conform to the city building code, city engineer W.D. Hurst said they “were reasonably adequate considering the emergency purpose for which they are designed.”[68] They were, as Scott pointed out, built to national building code standards. “The trouble is that too many builders built too many four-roomed bungalows, and charged far too high a price for them. Now, when we are trying to give the veteran a house with a reasonable rent to live in—they are feeling the pinch.”[69] The private sector was having trouble selling the houses it did build. In 1947 Fred C. Austin, the city’s chief housing inspector, noted that there were 400 newly constructed buildings that the owners could not sell at the prices they were asking. “It has always been a wonder to me,” he told a Free Press reporter, “that some of those unfortunate persons, living three and four in a room with their beds next to a greasy, smelling oil stove, haven’t taken possession of these unoccupied houses and defied the authorities to throw them out.”[70]
The Manitoba government provided no support for Wartime Housing development, a fact that irked the Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario Branch of the Canadian Legion, which could point to the Ontario government’s decision to fund the cost of lots and servicing.[71] Certainly, Scott kept the province apprised of the demand for low-cost housing: in 1946, he told a legislative committee that there were 2,000 applications for wartime housing and that a minimum of 10,000 new homes were needed in the city.[72]
Endless talk of shacks and shantytowns at council meant that many Winnipeggers felt justified in opposing the construction of Wartime Housing in their neighbourhood. The Elmwood Home and School Association objected to the building of the first 100 units of wartime housing in that neighbourhood.[73] Three north end city councillors and two CCF members of parliament supported the residents’ opposition to the housing. At a public meeting, Stanley Knowles told residents they were “fighting for the principle of public housing—good public housing.” Scott and Penner, the strangest of political bedfellows, stood shoulder to shoulder on this issue, with Scott accusing the critics risked jeopardizing the entire project, and Penner urging them to offer the federal government words of encouragement for what it was doing.[74]
On December 22, 1945, eight families moved into the first Wartime Houses to be occupied in Winnipeg. W.H. Durnin and his wife had been living in a tent on his parents’ lawn until the cold weather hit. From then on, they had been living in his parents’ house. Looking at the snow and slush that the movers had tracked in that moving day led one woman to comment, “I’m glad to have some floors to clean.”[75] On moving into her house in Elmwood, Edith Phillips told the Free Press that “It’s a shame there has been so much thoughtless talk about these houses. I am simply tickled with our house.” By the time all the Elmwood houses were completed in the spring of 1946, there were 1,700 applications were on file for wartime housing in Winnipeg.[76] A year later there were more than 4,000 former servicemen on the waiting list for Wartime Housing in Greater Winnipeg.[77] Not surprisingly that fall, the Canadian Legion called on municipalities to ask for 1,600 more wartime houses for Greater Winnipeg.[78]
The proposed sites for Wartime Housing were reshuffled on a number of occasions in response to concerns that the lots were too valuable.[79] In 1947 residents of Ward Two, an area dominated by modest housing in the city’s inner core, were able to block the placement of 58 wartime houses in the ward.[80] Residents of River Heights succeeded in blocking a proposal to build wartime housing in their exclusive south Winnipeg community. C.D. Heseltine “I think you will agree that homeowners make the best citizens and, and in our district, we are 90 per cent homeowners, who have little enough security.” [81] This opposition was met with a stinging rebuke from a returned serviceman.
Do these people, who already have a home, not care a bit if the servicemen who are not so fortunate as themselves, ever have a proper home for their wife and children, or is it a case of “the war is over. Our side won. Now let’s get back to the old days and forget about the sacrifices these boys made.”
In my case, as many others, my wife, our child and myself live in one room. The Wartime Housing people have deemed fit to put me on the list for a house, but, there are people with two or more children in similar circumstances which must be looked after first. If they stop building these houses, what is to happen to people as in my case?[82]
Municipal opposition to Wartime Housing was aggravated by the federal government’s careless boast that it was providing little if any subsidization to Wartime Housing since the buildings were inexpensive to build and the rents would, over time, cover the government costs.[83] The City of Winnipeg was, however, making a substantial contribution to the cost of Wartime Housing. The city donated the land, the servicing, and prepared the lots. By 1947, it was estimated that the servicing cost was half-a-million dollars, while the federal grant in lieu of taxes was only a quarter of the taxes the city would have received from privately owned homes.[84] While the Winnipeg Tribune provided editorial support for Wartime Housing, it also accused the federal government of failing “to recognize the housing shortage as a national crisis” and trying “to pass the buck to local governments.” [85]
Because the city was not collecting property taxes on Wartime Housing developments, it was loath to provide them with sidewalks and paved streets.[86] In November 1946, veterans were living in houses that were marooned in seas of mud, so thick in some places that businesses were refusing to make deliveries. While crushed rock was being placed in some of the worst roadways, nothing was being done about the sidewalks.[87] In 1947, in response to municipal objections, Wartime Housing agreed to buy the land from municipalities, pay for half the cost of installing services, and increase the grant that it paid in lieu of taxes on all new houses.[88] After a considerable, acrimonious, and entirely predictable debate, the city agreed to provide concrete sidewalks for Wartime Housing developments.[89]
Constant opposition from the property development industry led Winnipeg mayor Garnet Coulter to appoint a fact-finding board to investigate the economic and social impact of Wartime Housing in 1947.[90] The board’s final report proved to be a disappointment to the development industry. It not only defended the honour of wartime housing, categorizing allegations that they were slum housing as a slur on the people who inhabited them, it legitimized the prospect of municipal development of public housing. Perhaps its most prominent conclusion was that: “The housing of a large number of citizens who have not or may never have the ability or opportunity to earn sufficient to pay a competitive rent is a civic responsibility.”[91] As a result, it recommended that the City create a Winnipeg Housing Administration to build and manage a “permanent low rental scheme” that would provide housing to low-income families at a rate of no more than 20 per cent of the family income. It was estimated (optimistically according to a Free Press editorialist) that a four-room house could be built for $4,600 and a six-room house for $5,400. The mortgage payments on such houses would be between $29.42 and $33.89 a month, well beyond a quarter of the income of a someone making $90 a month. The report said that this gap would have to be filled by government subsidy, which it said, should come from the federal government as it did in Great Britain and the United States. As a first step towards developing such housing, it recommended that council “submit a money-bylaw to the ratepayers this year for the purpose of constructing 500 houses as soon as possible for rental to low income families.” An additional 500 houses should, it recommended, be built in the following year.[92] The report would serve as the launching pad of a fifteen-year campaign to public housing in Winnipeg.
From 1941 to 1948 Wartime Housing had built 40,100 units of low-cost rental housing across Canada. It could have served as the basis of such a national low-cost housing program. WHL president Joe Piggott recommended as much in May 1945 when he wrote:
If the Federal Government has to go on building houses for soldiers’ families; if they have to enter the field of low cost housing which it is my opinion they will undoubtedly have to do, then there is a great deal to be said in favour of using the well-established and smoothly operating facilities of Wartime Housing to continue to plan and construct these projects and afterward to manage and maintain them.[93]
But as housing advocate Humphrey Carver has written, the veterans housing program had proven to be too successful. “The prospect of the federal government becoming landlord to even more than 40,000 families horrified a Liberal government that was dedicated to private enterprise, and would do almost anything to avoid getting into a policy of public housing.”[94]. As early as 1946 the federal government began the process of selling Wartime Houses to existing tenants or when the tenants moved out. Six years later half of them had been sold.[95] The Canadian Legion opposed the sale of houses in Winnipeg, while some of the tenants favoured it since they could not otherwise afford to buy houses.[96] The residents of the Elmwood homes, which had been originally demonized as slums in the making, appear to have been receptive to the idea, while residents of homes in Weston had a number of complaints about the quality of the construction. Some were suspicious of the terms which they thought were too good to be true, while others said that they could not afford the proposed prices.[97] Politicians took, what appears in retrospect, to be surprising positions on the privatization of this housing. Both CCF councillor E.A. Brotman and Communist councillor Martin Forkin supported the sale of the housing.[98] Under the leadership of Duff Roblin and James Cowan, one a future premier, the other a future city councillor and member of the legislative assembly, Manitoba’s Young Conservatives opposed to the sale of wartime houses.[99].
In the post-war era, the federal government’s focus would be on stimulating and supporting the private housing sector. But as it wound down Wartime Housing, it could fully escape its responsibilities for low-cost housing. C.D. Howe committed the government to working with the provinces and the municipalities to address “the long-term housing problem, which includes slum clearance.”[100] In keeping with this approach, the National Housing Act was amended in 1949 to allow for federal funding of low-cost housing, but only on the condition that provincial governments contribute 25 per cent of the cost. To Humphrey Carver, this was a “shabby trick.” Provincial governments were dominated by rural electorates, had shown almost no interest in low-income housing in the past, and “were most unlikely to show any leadership in solving the very real problems of low-income people in the centre of the big cities.” [101] Carver’s analysis was certainly correct for Manitoba, where housing was funding under this agreement until the 1960s.
Sources
Bacher, John C. “Keeping to the private market: the evolution of Canadian housing policy, 1900-1949.” MA, Thesis University of Toronto, 1985.
Hall, David Edward. Times of Trouble: Labour Quiescence in Winnipeg 1920-1929. MA thesis, University of Manitoba, 1983.
Kimber, Stephen. Sailors, Slackers and Blind Pigs: Halifax at War. Toronto: Anchor Canada, 2002.
McCracken, Melinda, Memories are Made of This: What it was like to grown up in the fifties. Toronto: James Lorimer and Company, 1975.
McKillop, Brian. “Citizen as Socialist: The Ethos of Political Winnipeg, 1919–1935.” MA thesis, University of Manitoba, 1970.
Wade, Jill. “’A palace for the public,’: Housing reform and the 1946 occupation of the Old Hotel Vancouver.” BC Studies, numbers 69–70, Spring-Summer, 288–310.
Wade, Jill. “Wartime Housing Limited, 1941 – 1947: Canadian Housing Policy at the Crossroads.” Urban History Review/Revue d’histoire urbaine, 15, 1986 (1), 40–59.
Wade, Jill. “Wartime Housing Limited, 1941-1947; Canadian housing policy at the crossroads.” University of British Columbia, Masters of Arts thesis, 1984.
References
[1] Jill Wade, “Wartime Housing Limited, 1941 – 1947: Canadian Housing Policy at the Crossroads,” Urban History Review/Revue d’histoire urbaine, 15, 1986 (1), 46.
[2] “1,625 vets seek city homes,” Winnipeg Tribune, February 5, 1948.
[3] For reports on the debate over expansion of Wartime Housing in Winnipeg, see: “Winnipeg will enter agreement to construct 100 Wartime Homes,” Winnipeg Free Press, January 30, 1945; “Council approves 100-house plan,” Winnipeg Tribune, January 30, 1945, “Housing sites passed,” Winnipeg Tribune, July 30, 1946; “New Wartime Housing sites draw strong protests,” Winnipeg Free Press, July 19, 1946; “St. Boniface council rejects war houses,” Winnipeg Free Press, July 10, 1945; “Contract let for Transcona wartime homes,” Winnipeg Tribune, October 3, 1945; “City will apply for another 400,” Winnipeg Tribune, October 10, 1945; “Basements in homes still delay building,” Winnipeg Free Press, July 31, 1945.
[4] John C. Bacher, “Keeping to the private market: the evolution of Canadian housing policy, 1900-1949,” MA Thesis, University of Toronto, 1985, University of Toronto, 1985, 293–295, 303.
[5] John C. Bacher, “Keeping to the private market: the evolution of Canadian housing policy, 1900-1949,” MA Thesis, University of Toronto, 1985, University of Toronto, 1985, 293–295, 303.
[6] Jill Wade, “Wartime Housing Limited, 1941 – 1947: Canadian Housing Policy at the Crossroads,” Urban History Review/Revue d’histoire urbaine, 15, 1986 (1), 44. 47.
[7] John C. Bacher, “Keeping to the private market: the evolution of Canadian housing policy, 1900-1949,” MA Thesis, University of Toronto, 1985, University of Toronto, 1985, 293–295, 303.
[8] Jill Wade, “Wartime Housing Limited, 1941 – 1947: Canadian Housing Policy at the Crossroads,” Urban History Review/Revue d’histoire urbaine, 15, 1986 (1), 44, 47.
[9] Jill Wade, “Wartime Housing Limited, 1941 – 1947: Canadian Housing Policy at the Crossroads,” Urban History Review/Revue d’histoire urbaine, 15, 1986 (1), 46; Jill Wade, “Wartime Housing Limited, 1941-1947; Canadian housing policy at the crossroads,” University of British Columbia, Masters of Arts thesis, 1984, 113.
[10] Jill Wade, “Wartime Housing Limited, 1941 – 1947: Canadian Housing Policy at the Crossroads,” Urban History Review/Revue d’histoire urbaine, 15, 1986 (1), 49.
[11] John C. Bacher, “Keeping to the private market: the evolution of Canadian housing policy, 1900-1949,” MA Thesis, University of Toronto, 1985, 306–307, 310–317.
[12] Jill Wade, “Wartime Housing Limited, 1941-1947; Canadian housing policy at the crossroads,” University of British Columbia, Masters of Arts thesis, 1984, 128–129.
[13] Jill Wade, “Wartime Housing Limited, 1941 – 1947: Canadian Housing Policy at the Crossroads,” Urban History Review/Revue d’histoire urbaine, 15, 1986 (1), 46, 49, 53; “Mayor Queen raps temporary homes,” Winnipeg Tribune, May 29, 1942.
[14] “Conscription call heard in Commons,” Winnipeg Free Press, November 11, 1941.
[15] “Member backs housing plan, Winnipeg Tribune, March 25, 1942; “M.P. asks why wartime houses cost so much,” Winnipeg Tribune, May 20, 1942.
[16] “Coldwell urges postwar plans be made now,” Winnipeg Free Press, August 5, 1942.
[17] Jill Wade, “Wartime Housing Limited, 1941 – 1947: Canadian Housing Policy at the Crossroads,” Urban History Review/Revue d’histoire urbaine, 15, 1986 (1), 49.
[18] “Wartime Housing hit in Commons,” Winnipeg Free Press, November 21, 1945.
[19] “No house building near cordite plant,” Winnipeg Tribune, April 22, 1941; “Wartime Housing being hindered by supply shortages,” Winnipeg Tribune, July 11, 1941.
[20] Jill Wade, “Wartime Housing Limited, 1941 – 1947: Canadian Housing Policy at the Crossroads,” Urban History Review/Revue d’histoire urbaine, 15, 1986 (1), 43.
[21] “Gourley reports on city survey,” Winnipeg Free Press, December 5, 1941.
[22] “May use warehouses as temporary homes, Winnipeg Tribune, April 28, 1942.
[23] “Mayor Queen raps temporary homes,” Winnipeg Tribune, May 29, 1942.
[24] Dick Sanburn, “400 facing moving day without homes,” Winnipeg Tribune, April 23, 1941.
[25] “Wartime Housing to build homes here, says mayor,” Winnipeg Tribune, August 17, 1942; “Queen says houses to be permanent,” Winnipeg Free Press, August 27, 1942; Jill Wade, “Wartime Housing Limited, 1941 – 1947: Canadian Housing Policy at the Crossroads,” Urban History Review/Revue d’histoire urbaine, 15, 1986 (1), 51.
[26] “Approve request for 600 hundred houses,” Winnipeg Free Press, September 16, 1942.
[27] “Queen regrets Ottawa delay over housing,” Winnipeg Free Press, October 5, 1942.
[28] Quote from Library and Archives Canada, RG19, Vol. 3980, File H-l-15 Cyril R. DeMara, Rentals Administrator, to R.C. Carr, Assistant Secretary, WPTB, 2 November 1942, cited in Jill Wade, “Wartime Housing Limited, 1941 – 1947: Canadian Housing Policy at the Crossroads,” Urban History Review/Revue d’histoire urbaine, 15, 1986 (1), 51.
[29] Library and Archives Canada, RG19, Vol. 3980, File H-l- 15, J.L. lsley to C.D. Howe, 21 October 1942, in Jill Wade, “Wartime Housing Limited, 1941 – 1947: Canadian Housing Policy at the Crossroads,” Urban History Review/Revue d’histoire urbaine, 15, 1986 (1), 51.
[30] Jill Wade, “Wartime Housing Limited, 1941 – 1947: Canadian Housing Policy at the Crossroads,” Urban History Review/Revue d’histoire urbaine, 15, 1986 (1), 51
[31] John C. Bacher, “Keeping to the private market: the evolution of Canadian housing policy, 1900-1949,” MA Thesis, University of Toronto, 1985, 310–317. PIggott quote from Minutes of Wartime Housing Board of Directors, PAC RG83, Vol. 70, Book One, cited in John C. Bacher, “Keeping to the private market: the evolution of Canadian housing policy, 1900-1949,” MA Thesis, University of Toronto, 1985, 315.
[32] John C. Bacher, “Keeping to the private market: the evolution of Canadian housing policy, 1900-1949,” MA Thesis University of Toronto, 1985, 357.
[33] John C. Bacher, “Keeping to the private market: the evolution of Canadian housing policy, 1900-1949,” MA Thesis, University of Toronto, 1985, 442.
[34] Blair Fraser, “Howe at the controls,” Maclean’s, February 1, 1948, 10, 43–44; John C. Bacher, “Keeping to the private market: the evolution of Canadian housing policy, 1900-1949,” MA Thesis, University of Toronto, 1985, 442, 457, 460.
[35] “Vets’ families in Wartime homes,” Winnipeg Free Press, December 24, 1945.
[36] “1,000th war house opens for public,” Winnipeg Free Press, September 9, 1947.
[37] “Housing group rejects debate on vets’ rent,” Winnipeg Tribune, July 7, 1949. Winnipeg’s Wartime Housing allotment expanded incrementally. See: “City to get 400 more homes,” Winnipeg Tribune, November 1, 1945; “City to ask for 500 more wartime homes,” Winnipeg Tribune, June 4, 1946; “1,000th war house opens for public,” Winnipeg Free Press, September 9, 1947; “City’s bid for homes refused,” Winnipeg Tribune, June 25, 1946; “Those additional wartime houses,” Winnipeg Tribune, January 10, 1947; “City to get 1,000 new homes,” Winnipeg Free Press, January 24, 1947.
[38] “City housing situation termed ‘Disgrace,’” Winnipeg Tribune, November 18, 1944; For Pickering’s appointment, see: “Free care urged for tuberculosis,” Winnipeg Free Press, July 30, 1942. For Pickering’s retirement see: Margaret May, “Retires—with worries,” Winnipeg Tribune, July 5, 1945.
[39] “No, not fit for pigs, Ald. Black declares,” Winnipeg Free Press, May 13, 1944; “Housing surplus to swell city coffers,” Winnipeg Tribune, November 18, 1944; “Winnipeg’s housing scheme is approved by City Council,” Winnipeg Free Press, May 20, 1944; “16-house plan given ‘Go’ signal,” Winnipeg Tribune, May 23, 1944. “Housing surplus to swell city coffers,” Winnipeg Tribune, November 18, 1944. For Black’s political affiliation see: “CEC on the air tonight,” Winnipeg Free Press, November 16, 1943.
[40] “But what to do about families out on the street at the end of month,” Winnipeg Tribune, May 23, 1944.
[41] John C. Bacher, “Keeping to the private market: the evolution of Canadian housing policy, 1900-1949,” MA Thesis, University of Toronto, 1985, 433–444, 457, 460; “Mayor urge indemnities for war plants,” Winnipeg Tribune, May 28, 1943; Jill Wade, “Wartime Housing Limited, 1941 – 1947: Canadian Housing Policy at the Crossroads,” Urban History Review/Revue d’histoire urbaine, 15, 1986 (1), 46–47.
[42] “Winnipeg’s housing scheme is approved by City Council,” Winnipeg Free Press, May 20, 1944; “16-house plan given ‘Go’ signal,” Winnipeg Tribune, May 23, 1944.
[43] “‘Home for veterans’ project seeks Council’s approval,” Winnipeg Tribune, January 26, 1945, “Wartime homes ready before winter comes,” Winnipeg Free Press, August 24, 1945. For the estimate on the comparative cost of private sector housing, see: “Wartime housing accomplishments,” Winnipeg Free Press, February 13, 1947.
[44] “Winnipeg will enter agreement to construct 100 Wartime Homes,” Winnipeg Free Press, January 30, 1945; “Council approves 100-house plan,” Winnipeg Tribune, January 30, 1945.
[45] “Charles Edward Simonite,” Winnipeg Free Press, December 10, 1973; Manitoba Historical Society, Memorable Manitobans, “Charles Edward Simonite,” http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/people/simonite_ce.shtml accessed November 10, 2020. Simonite developed 500 units of housing at the south end of Osborne on land that he had purchased from the Winnipeg Electric Company in 1941. See: Melinda McCracken, Memories are Made of This: What it was like to grown up in the fifties, Toronto: James Lorimer and Company, 1975, 6.
[46] “H.B. Scott dies at 73,” Winnipeg Free Press, October 6, 1972.
[47] Election ad, Winnipeg Free Press, November 14, 1942.
[48] “Aldermanic candidates—Ward Two,” Winnipeg Free Press, November 17, 1942; Election results, Winnipeg Free Press, November 30, 1942. For Scott’s address, see: “Ald. Scott fined $15 for speeding,” Winnipeg Tribune, July 5, 1944.
[49] “Star performance,” Winnipeg Tribune, June 28, 1949. For more on the conflicts between Simonite and Scott, see: “Site revelations rock city hall,” Winnipeg Free Press, June 22, 1946; “Housing hits another snag,” Winnipeg Tribune, July 12, 1946. “City’s bid for homes refused,” Winnipeg Tribune, June 25, 1946l Charge of civic inefficiency rouses vigorous protest,” Winnipeg Free Press, August 16, 1946; “City to investigate Scott charges of inefficiency,” Winnipeg Free Press, August 27, 1946; “Civic committee drops ‘Inefficiency’ question,” Winnipeg Free Press, October 25, 1946; “Alderman Scott obtains revision,” Winnipeg Tribune, July 12, 1946; “Monday night club,” Winnipeg Free Press, February 26, 1947.
[50] “City’s bid for homes refused,” Winnipeg Tribune, June 25, 1946; “Alderman Scott obtains revision,” Winnipeg Tribune, July 12, 1946.
[51] “Aldermen’s failure to discuss wage report disappoints gallery,” Winnipeg Free Press, October 10, 1945. For more on the Halifax riot, see: Stephen Kimber, Sailors, Slackers and Blind Pigs: Halifax at War, Toronto: Anchor Canada, 2002. For the Adershot Riot, see: “Canadian troops riot in Aldershot,” New York Times, July 5, 1945.
[52] Jill Wade, “’A palace for the public,’: Housing reform and the 1946 occupation of the Old Hotel Vancouver,” BC Studies, numbers 69–70, Spring-Summer, 288–310.
[53] David Edward Hall, Times of Trouble: Labour Quiescence in Winnipeg 1920-1929, MA thesis, University of Manitoba, 1983, 114.
[54] “100 Wartime Houses for Elmwood,” Winnipeg Tribune, June 19, 1945.
[55] Brian McKillop, “Citizen as Socialist: The Ethos of Political Winnipeg, 1919–1935,” MA thesis, University of Manitoba, 1970.
[56] “Housing scheme again attacked,” Winnipeg Tribune, June 5, 1945.
[57] “100 Wartime Houses for Elmwood,” Winnipeg Tribune, June 19, 1945.
[58] “100 Wartime Houses for Elmwood,” Winnipeg Tribune, June 19, 1945.
[59] “Gen. Price has high praise for Wartime Housing role,” Winnipeg Free Press, January 17, 1947.
[60] “The Legion’s stand on housing,” Winnipeg Tribune, July 12, 1947.
[61] “Simonite says whole Wartime Housing scheme rotten,” Winnipeg Free Press, June 14, 1946; B.M. “The need is great,” Winnipeg Free Press, February 15, 1947.
[62] B.M. “The need is great,” Winnipeg Free Press, February 15, 1947.
[63] “Housing: ‘Worse than inadequate,’” Winnipeg Tribune, October 23, 1945.
[64] “Central volunteer bureau,” Winnipeg Free Press, November 24, 1945.
[65] “Winnipeg will enter agreement to construct 100 Wartime Homes,” Winnipeg Free Press, January 30, 1945; “Council approves 100-house plan,” Winnipeg Tribune, January 30, 1945. C.T. Lount of the Winnipeg Homebuilders Association opposed the construction of Wartime Housing claiming that local contractors could do a better job at a lower price, “City news request for congested area,” Winnipeg Free Press, April 10, 1945.
[66] “Want Wartime Housing to quit,” Winnipeg Tribune, July 6, 1945.
[67] “Citizens protest further wartime home building,” Winnipeg Tribune, January 28, 1947; “Monday night club,” Winnipeg Free Press, February 26, 1947.
[68] “100 Wartime Houses for Elmwood,” Winnipeg Tribune, June 19, 1945.
[69] “Ald. Scott claims building code not violated by Wartime Housing,” Winnipeg Free Press, February 1, 1947.
[70] “City short 10,000 housing units, yet 400 stand empty says official,” Winnipeg Free Press September 29, 1947.
[71] “Legion parley passes resolution requesting liquor act amendment,” Winnipeg Free Press, June 8, 1949.
[72] “City needs more than 10,000 homes, Winnipeg Tribune, March 28, 1946.
[73] “Elmwood protests Wartime Housing,” Winnipeg Tribune, June 20, 1945.
[74] “100 Wartime Houses for Elmwood,” Winnipeg Tribune, June 19, 1945; “Resolution asks better war homes,” Winnipeg Tribune, June 29, 1945.
[75] “Vets’ families in Wartime homes,” Winnipeg Free Press, December 24, 1945.
[76] “Veterans Now Occupy 117 Homes in Elmwood,” Winnipeg Free Press, 28 February 1946.
[77] “4,000 local veterans seek wartime houses,” Winnipeg Free Press, May 9, 1947.
[78] “Legion urges 1,600 more homes here,” Winnipeg Tribune, November 8, 1946.
[79] “Housing sites passed,” Winnipeg Tribune, July 30, 1946; “New Wartime Housing sites draw strong protests,” Winnipeg Free Press, July 19, 1946.
[80] “Approves 518 lots for war houses,” Winnipeg Free Press, April 15, 1947.
[81] “City starts work on Howe’s rental collection offer,” Winnipeg Free Press, July 26, 1946. “Builders seek council committee to probe wartime houses set-up,” Winnipeg Free Press, January 31, 1947.
[82] “Houses for veterans,” Winnipeg Tribune, February 7, 1947.
[83] “Mr. Isley on housing subsidies,” Winnipeg Tribune, April 4, 1947.
[84] “Lots for 100 Wartime Houses,” Winnipeg Free Press, May 10, 1945; “Those additional wartime houses,” Winnipeg Tribune, January 10, 1947.
[85] “Those additional wartime houses,” Winnipeg Tribune, January 10, 1947; “Mr. Isley on housing subsidies,” Winnipeg Tribune, April 4, 1947.
[86] “Wartime house units may not get sidewalks,” Winnipeg Tribune/Winnipeg Free Press, April 17, 1946.
[87] “Marooned wartime homes,” Winnipeg Tribune, November 22, 1946.
[88] John C. Bacher, “Keeping to the private market: the evolution of Canadian housing policy, 1900-1949,” MA Thesis. University of Toronto, 1985, 502–503.
[89] “Council OK’s sidewalks for Wartime Housing sites,” Winnipeg Free Press, July 15, 1947.
[90] “Housing probe scheme for city defeated,” Winnipeg Tribune, February 25, 1947; “Fact-finding board on housing hears Brown report on taxes,” Winnipeg Free Press, May 13, 1947; “Low-cost city housing asked,” Winnipeg Tribune, July 3, 1947.
[91] “Low-cost city housing asked,” Winnipeg Tribune, July 3, 1947; “City urged to purchase war homes,” Winnipeg Tribune, July 3, 1947.
[92] “Winnipeg’s housing,” Winnipeg Free Press, July 7, 1947.
[93] Minutes, Annual Meeting of WHL Shareholders, 29 May 1945, 6, Public Archives of Canada [hereafter PAC], Defence Construction Ltd. Papers, RG 83, Vol. 70, Minutes, Vol. 2, quoted in Jill Wade, “Wartime Housing Limited, 1941 – 1947: Canadian Housing Policy at the Crossroads,” Urban History Review/Revue d’histoire urbaine, 15, 1986 (1), 42.
[94] Humphrey Carver, Compassionate Landscape: Places and People in a Man’s Life, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975, 110.
[95] John C. Bacher, “Keeping to the private market: the evolution of Canadian housing policy, 1900-1949,” MA, Thesis University of Toronto, 1985, 520–521; Jill Wade, “Wartime Housing Limited, 1941 – 1947: Canadian Housing Policy at the Crossroads,” Urban History Review/Revue d’histoire urbaine, 15, 1986 (1), 49.
[96] “City to get 1,000 new homes,” Winnipeg Free Press, January 24, 1947; “Sale of Wartime Houses,” Winnipeg Tribune, November 30, 1949.
[97] “Vets undecided on buying homes,” Winnipeg Tribune, January 25, 1947.
[98] “Aldermen back Ottawa scheme,” Winnipeg Free Press, January 25, 1947.
[99] “Prog. Cons. Study housing,” Winnipeg Tribune, February 7, 1947.
[100] “Government in business,” Winnipeg Free Press, February 2, 1948.
[101] Humphrey Carver, Compassionate Landscape: Places and People in a Man’s Life, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975, 110.