HOUSINGAGAIN-L Housing Again, Bulletin No. 26

[Catherine Nasmith <cnasmith@sympatico.ca>]

HOUSING AGAIN -Bulletin Number 26, January 31, 2001

A twice-monthly electronic bulletin published on what people are doing
to put housing back on the public agenda in Ontario, across Canada and
around the world. Our web site is ttp://www.housingagain.web.net

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In this issue:
1. Collingwood's avalanche of development
2. A little good news in Toronto
3. Third-world lessons for Canadians
4.  Errata
5. Check out our Alerts!

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1. Collingwood's avalanche of development

There's a new little outfit that's set up shop in Collingwood ski
country -and it's not a sportswear boutique. As of January 2, 2001, the
Georgian Triangle Housing Resource Centre opened its doors as the first
and only housing service in the area since 1996. Before that time, there
were forty housing services across the province, located mainly in rural
areas and small towns where there is very little social housing, but
only twelve survived the provincial cuts and that did not include Collingwood.

Gail Michalenko, director of the Georgian Triangle Housing Resource
Centre knows the area well. Her parents belonged to the romantic
pioneering group of people who opened up Blue Mountain in Collingwood as
a major ski centre, back in the days when you put rabbit skins under
your skis to climb back up the hill. Now Michalenko sees Blue Mountain
as the epi-centre of a housing disaster in the making.

Unlike the Muskoka area where the gradually growing cottage tourism has
been cultivated by the townships, the mammoth Interwest ski development
group bought up Blue Mountain Ski Resort just outside Collingwood, in
one fell swoop. Rents and real estate prices soared immediately at the
prospect of a massive invasion of tourists and workers. Within two years
it is expected that 3600 more employees will work at Blue Mountain, a
six-fold increase. 

Blue Mountain is currently Collingwood's largest employer, with 150 full
time and 450 part time workers.

This gives some sense of the scope of change: in a single day last year
Interwest sold $325 million worth of condos at Blue Mountain, and this
is well before there's a shovel was in the ground. Contrast that with
the area's average combined family income of $42,000 a  year, a figure
well below even the provincial average of $54,000.

The vacancy rate in Collingwood is only 1.3% with rents rising, and
virtually no affordable housing left. There are about forty social
housing units in the area, but they have a waiting list of 229 families.
Michalenko put it bluntly: "Practically the only turnover is if someone
dies." She has no idea where all the poorly paid service employees will
live when their income is insufficient to obtain a mortgage and
available rental space non-existent.

The area lacks a general emergency shelter, although the Salvation Army
arranges for people in need to stay in a hotel for a few nights. It's
hardly a solution. One couple being put up by Ontario Works in an
unsavoury hotel cannot have their children returned to them until they
have proper housing - they were evicted from a three bedroom apartment
which the owner said he wanted to use for himself. It's an increasingly
frequent chorus heard these days in the Interwest neighbourhood.

The Housing Resource Centre has patched together funding for seven
months from the Provincial Homelessness Initiative, HRDC, Collingwood's 
municipal council, and a small grant from United Way. The Centre is
setting up a service  matching available to listed tenants, as well as
advocating for local groups trying to establish affordable housing
projects. One local group hopes to change a soon to be abandoned public
school into affordable housing.

Predictably, the NIMBY spirit is alive and well in this part of Ontario.
The formerly humble - and pretty - towns of Thornbury and Clarksburg are
now the amalgamated Town of Blue Mountain, and it is more interested in
tax revenues from the new development than in affordable housing. Human
Resources staff with Interwest don't foresee housing  problems in the
area, nor  do Town of Blue Mountain staff. By way of contrast, Whistler,
British Columbia, insisted  that Interwest provide affordable housing
proportionate to the tourist capacity.

The best thing Collingwood may have done is to finance the Georgian
Triangle Housing Resource Centre to bring to the fore and advocate for
affordable housing in this breath-takingly beautiful area overlooking
Georgian Bay.

2. A little good news in Toronto

A good news story just when we need it. After considerable opposition
and an Ontario Municipal Board hearing, the St. Clare's project on
Leonard Avenue behind Toronto Western Hospital in downtown Toronto is
going ahead. Having convinced the OMB panel that the project will not
encroach on parkland, it won't be a haven for drug dealers, and that the
neighbourhood will not be overrun with traffic, the multi-faith housing
group is now free to purchase a building which houses medical offices,
and convert it to 51 units of affordable housing for single people. 
Funding will come from the federal government's S.C.P.I. (Sustaining
Community Partnership Initiatives) program, and from the city's housing
initiative fund. It's a good example of what can be done.

3. Third-world lessons for Canadians

Various commentators on both the right and left political wings, have
joked disparagingly about Canada becoming a third world nation. Perhaps
in the field of affordable housing that's not all bad.

John Van Nostrand, an architect and planner, has frequently worked
overseas for the last twenty years. He believes that we need a different
approach that allows houses to begin small and expand in accord with
need and economic means. Good housing is not necessarily born full-size
and fully furnished.

In Beijing, China, in the 1970s after devastating earthquakes, people
were not allowed to live in structures of more than three floors. Many
urban dwellers, not so far from peasant roots, built little huts on the
wide empty boulevards of the city. When it was deemed safe to return to
their units several flights up, these supposedly temporary shelters were
not torn down but were  gradually expanded to created more precious
space and privacy. In fact, these houses were among the best examples of
contemporary indigenous Chinese architecture to be seen in Beijing.
Smoke puffed out of little chimneys and crocheted lace decorated windows
along with a geranium or two. Some owners even put a street number
proudly beside the door.

With the historic China-US Recognition Treaty, orders came that the
brick and mud earthquake houses had to go. Those in charge thought they
looked messy and impoverished to tourists. The atmosphere among
residents was so fraught with tension that one man hurled a cinder block
at a foreign photographer documenting these buildings before they were
destroyed,  and was only stopped from causing injury when a neighbour
wrestled him to the ground.

John Van Nostrand is familiar with dwellings built by individuals in
local styles, growing within means to meet needs, rather than being
bought beyond people's means and still not meeting their needs. He sees
the possibilities of this happening here. His revolutionary idea is that
some people should build their own houses, not contractors and hired builders.

Citing the book `Unplanned Suburbs' by Richard Harris, Van Nostrand
says, "Up to 1950 over 40% of the houses in Toronto were owner built,
especially in areas like New Toronto between the QEW. and the lake or
the Lansdowne and St. Clair area, or around Coxwell Avenue. Harris
documents a situation similar to the third world where people build what
they can afford and then add on."

Small affordable dwellings are certainly what people need at Tent City,
the unplanned lakeshore community where homeless people have built small
dwellings of varying strength, some quite rugged little homes. Others
are living in `Durakit' disaster houses, built in Canada for third world
export, to provide fast shelter after earthquakes, for example. The
problem with these latter structures  is that they are not designed to
expand although there are larger models, including a communal structure
with showers and bathrooms.

Van Nostrand and his colleagues have published progressive plans (pun
intended) in a recent report submitted to CMHC, `ProHome, a planned,
progressive approach to affordable home ownership.' He hopes that
perhaps Tent City residents might be able to erect buildings on a more
permanent site. He thinks a home can start out with 200 square feet
designed to be able to expand all the way up to 2500 square feet.  One
design, marketed with Viceroy Cottages, can be built by the owner and
enables incremental growth.

He sees the lack of small houses on the market as an opportunity rather
than just a problem. Since 40% of the cost of a house is labour,
do-it-yourself has merits and is not completely impractical. The theory
is that others can help, groups like Habitat for Humanity, churches, or
just neighbours. It used to be that Eaton's and Simpson's delivered
housing kits to build yourself, or to hire a builder to put it together.

When the troops came home after World War Two, Van Nostrand says, "they
formed a whole group of people outside the economy who wanted back in.
We taught the soldiers how to build. But they were heroes, not squeegee kids."

Others note that while the experience in countries such as Turkey and
South Africa is that self-build housing can provide good shelter for
low-income households, the important lesson to be learned is that
training and other assistance is needed to ensure self-builders meet
important construction and safety standards. Some self-built communities
provide substandard, unsafe housing because the owner/builders don't
have the knowledge, or the resources, to create housing at a proper
standard. Training and proper building materials are two of the keys to
safe, self-build housing.

Van Nostrand thinks these lessons can be learned. "Perhaps our design
will help to develop another economy of builders," he says. "You'd find
people coming out of the woodwork. Our projects could have training as
well. We've been talking about a development where we would get land,
put up an office and let people build all different sizes on one property."

His voice is full of the excitement of a visionary and an idealist. And
what about profiteering? "That could be a problem, but we could do
something like not giving out a deed until the house is finished, which
would stop the sell off of raw land. Maybe we'd have to put a covenant
on the land. Municipal by-laws are a problem, for sure. And we want to
do it without a subsidy."

4. Errata
In bulletin No. 25 there was an error in Margaret Eberle’s e-mail
address, the address is m_eberle@bc.sympatico.ca, apologies to anyone
trying to reach her.

5. Check out our Alerts section!

Check out our 'Alerts' section of HousingAgain for fresh news up-dated
daily and important and interesting information. Point your browser to
http://www.housingagain.web.net then click on "alerts". Make sure to
check regularly for new information. If you have a news release or other
news, you can post it to the site by clicking on "post".
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