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Radio Address

@ <A complete urban program
must contemplate the construc-
tion of 606,000 housing units in
the first decade. This assumes
@ program which covers current
needs as estimated but reduces
only half of the backlog in ten
years. On the basis of a more
liberal interpretation of available
figures, a more extended attack
on the elimination of obsolete
and overcrowded dwellings or the
setting of a higher standard for
new housing requirements, a pro-
sram of much larger dimensions
could be envisaged.

—Curtis Report on Housing
and Community Planning
(Current annual
requirements).

@ Poor housing is not cheap
housing. The cost in human
lives, in the spread of disease,
crime and delinquency is in-
calculable. Homes are the basic
foundation of community life.
We must have bold government-
al action stimulated by tremen-
dous public pressure to force
immediate solution of this vital
problem.

—-Nigel Morgan, LPP Provincial
leader, speaking at Lenin Mem-
orial meeting Sunday, Jan. 20.

@ The whole trend of the lat-
est act is to make things easier
for the financial interests who
are “investing” in the limited di-
vidend corporations, harder for
the people who need the housing.
The government’s concern has
been with interest rates and not
the building of houses.

—Tim Buck Radio Address.

@ Many of the dwellings at
present occupied are unsuitable
for habitation. Slums should be
blotted out. In the immediate
future at least 30,000 new homes
are required. Steps should be
taken now to launch large scale
low rental home construction. We
provincial housing

to finance large

propose a
“bond drive”
scale housing.

—LPP Provincial Election
Program, November — 1945.

e it is estimated’ that a mini-
mum rehousing program (includ-
ing slum clearance) requires
125,000 units in the major cities,
end another 50,000 in the smaller
cities. It may be mentioned
that in major cities alone the
number of dwellings in need of
external repairs or lacking ade-
quate plumbing facilities exceed-
ed 250,000.

—Curtis Report on Housing
and Community Planning.

ie SUPPLEMENT—JAN. 25, 1946

. Breeder Of Delinquency

She told me that the houses in the row
had been condemned by the Health Depart-
ment-as unfit for habitation, but the land-

‘lord refused to do anything. ‘‘It’s an awful

looking dive,’’ she said with an embarrased
laugh. ““We’ve been down to see the land-
lord three times but although he’s promised
to fix the place up, he hasn’t done anything.”

We said that the landlord probably fig-
ured that the place wasn’t worth fixing up.
She nodded, and pushed back a lock of
blonde hair that slipped over her eyes.

Did the kids have anywhere to play? “Only
what you see out in front.

How old were the children? “This one
is one and a half, and the others outside are
two and a half and just past four,” she said.

Was her husband working? ‘“‘My hus-
band was working in the shipyards as an
electrician, but he lost his job. When we
came out here from the East Coast it was
the only place we could get of our own. We
tried living with some folks of ours, but
that never works out. It’s hard to get a
decent place,’”’ she finished wistfully.

Before I left she said she wished some-
one would start a housing program, “‘so the
kids could have a place to play.” She stood
on the porch with the little boy in her arms
watching Ruth finish her sketch. Three
neighborhood kids stood on top of the pile
of junk and rubble behind the houses watch-
ing. Her other two kids stood in a mud
puddle, peeking around a pile of garbage
cans and split wood, watching.

e
UR final stop was a Prior Street Apart-

ment house. Five people, a man, his wife,
and three children live in two small rooms.
When we came in the woman was just finish-
ing hanging her wash on a clothes rack
above the stove. There were three layers
of sodden clothing, from socks to baby’s
diapers. The humidity in the warm room
was high from the moisture. She welcomed
us and told us to come in and ‘“‘draw any-
thing you want, as long as you can get it all
in.
She told us about how tough it is living
- in two rooms, and about the red ants that
got inte everything. She told us how one
morning she had come out and found the pot
with the baby’s food in it “just covered with
them.” and about the time they built a nest
in her het water bottle. She told us about
the landlord doing everything he could think
of to try to get them to move out, so he could
raise the rent to the same he charged in the
other six apartments, which were raised when
previous tenants move out. Her husband
pointed out that there was no hot water, that
the building was unheated, that the landlady

bullied his children. “I should have four or five
rooms for my wife and kids, at least,” the
husband told us. Ruth'drew a sketch of the
kitchen as he sat and told us about the dif-
ficulties of living in a rent-racketeer’s apart-
ment house.

“If I could ‘get a decent house for my
wife and kids,” he said, “I’d pack up and
get out of here, even in the middle of the
night, or at three o’clock in the morning.’

“The soldiers should demand decent
housing,” the wife said. “Kids need com-
munity centers, and working people should
have nice houses instead of having to live
in holes like this one. Why my kids learn
all kinds of things they shouldn’t on the
streets, and there’s no place for the baby to
get fresh air and sunshine.”’

A flock of lazily wheeling sea-gulls were
hovering in the slate grey sky. The wife
saw me looking at them. ‘Oh, they come
every day,’’ she said, and pointed out of the
window across a weedy, scrubby field out-
side of the window. “They come to eat up
at the dump thére.”’ I looked out. About 300
yards behirtd the house a huge pile of gar-
bage was heaped, spilling into a sluggish
creek. The wind was carrying a mist-like
smoke toward the house. ‘“‘That’s the burn-
ing at night,’ we were informed..

Ruth asked if she could sketch the bed-
room through the doorway. “Sure, but I
doubt if the papers wide enough to get
everything in.”’

It turned out that the husband, and two
children, a boy and girl, sleep in the bed-
room. The baby spends the early part of his
evening sleeping in the carriage, and the
mother takes him with her after the rest go
to bed. She sleeps on the chesterfield. “When
I open it out there’s only about ten inches of
space left between it and the stove,” she told

“What we need is a government housing
plan,”’ the wife told me. ‘‘People shouldn’t
be forced to live in places like this. The land-
lords take advantage of people because they
need houses so bad. No wonder there’s crime
and juvenile delinquency. People are en-
titled to a decent home, and it’s the respon-
sibility of the government to see that they
get them.

“Sure,”’ the husband joined in. “Houses
like this one should be torn down, they’re
no good to anybody but the landlords. They
have been saying they’re going to give us
housing for a long time.’’ We asked who
‘they’ were. “Why the government, and the
city council,’ he replied. “But the only way
we're going to make them give us housing is
to fight for it.”

We heartily agreed with him.

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