Social housing in Canada: Governmental attitude towards the growing housing problem

Abstract

Social housing includes all forms of subsidized housing for those who cannot afford appropriate housing on the free market. A house is not only a shelter, but a place of personalization and socialization: Housing is thus a basic good in terms of both physical and mental health. In Canada, in spite of the fact that the problem of poor housing conditions first came to light at the end of the last century and that the housing crisis intensified during the Great Depression of the 1930s, the federal government did not create its first social housing program until 1949. This program was not very effective and in 1964 another more succesful program was developed to provide more public housing units. Nevertheless, most of the federal aid was still geared to housing on the free market. Moreover, at the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, public housing projects were criticized because of their large scale, poor design, ghetto image, and high cost. Consequently, in 1973 the federal government decided to promote another form of social housing which would favour social mix and the involvement of the community at the local level (i.e., cooperative and other forms of non-profit housing). With this program the proportion of social housing units financed in part by the federal government increased, but it remains small compared to that devoted to housing on the free market. In 1979, the government, preoccupied by its deficit, again modified the National Housing Act. It withdrew its direct aid from private and public housing, but continued to support cooperative and non-profit housing by subsidizing interest rates and units occupied by low-income people. By 1985, government pressures to cut social expenditure led to the abolition of the 1979 program and its replacement by another in which federal assistance was greatly reduced. Today, social housing represents only about four percent of the Canadian housing stock. This reflects the minimal involvement of the federal government in helping those whose housing needs are not satisfied in the free market. The inability to afford appropriate market housing is closely related to poverty. In the first half of the 1980s, the problem of poverty in Canada increased, particularly among young individuals living alone, sinlge-parent families headed by young women, and older persons not living in a family. From 1973 to 1986, the 'poverty-gap' widened. In the housing market, we then see two kinds of consumers: those who have more and more money to pay for what they want and those who have less and less money to pay for what they need. To deal with housing affordability, the state should spend more funds in the production of public, cooperative, and non-profit housing. But the federal government prefers to pass the responsibility for social housing to other levels of government without giving them the financial resources needed to assume this role. At the local level, we should encourage some municipal initiatives such as low-interest loans for the purchase of housing by cooperatives and non-profit organizations, and the transfer of municipal lands and buildings to them. However, many local governments are not involved in the field of social housing, so there is an equity problem. Finally, in view of the relationship of the housing affordability question to the poverty problem, we should expect from the federal and provincial governments some measures aimed at reducing poverty. Yet the government's commitment to the redistribution of social wealth remains a timid one.