Houses for All is the story of the struggle for socialhousing in Vancouver between 1919 and 1950. It argues that, howevertemporary or limited their achievements, local activists pplayed asignificant role in the introduction, implementation, or continuationof many early national housing programs. Ottawa's housinginitiatives were not always unilateral actions in the development ofthe welfare state. The drive for social housing in Vancouvercomplemented the tradition of housing activism that already existed inthe United Kingdom and, to a lesser degree, in the United States.
Jill Wade analyzes the housing problem that developed in Vancouverin the first half of this century: the chronic shortage of decentliving conditions for those of low income, and the occasional seriouscrisis in owned and rented dwellings for others of middle income.Beginning in 1919 with the Better Housing Scheme and concluding in theearly 1950s with the construction of Little Mountain, the first publichousing project in Vancouver, the book also chronicles the responses ofgovernments and activists alike to the city's residentialconditions. It highlights the spirited, yet frustrated, campaign forlow-rental housing in the late 1930s and the more successful, sometimesmilitant, drive for relief during the housing emergency of the 1940s.Fascinating and informative, Houses for All repairs thecurious rupture in the collective historical memory that has leftVancouverites of the 1990s unaware of previous housing crises and pastactivism and achievements.
Wade’s account is a valuable contribution to the largely unknown history of Vancouver’s early social housing movement and -- in no small measure -- a valuable contribution to Canada’s housing history. It is to be hoped that Wade will write a sequel.
I would recommend this strongly to anyone who is interested in the history of housing, and to a lesser extent municipal politics, in Canada.
A text which is readable and urbane yet packed as tightly with information as people were in the 1940s Vancouver housing stock.
Illustrations and Tables
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Housing and Reform in Pre-Depression Vancouver
2. 'Slum Dwellings': The Housing Problem in the 1930s
3. Responding to the Housing Problem in the 1930s: The Campaign forLow-Rent Housing
4. 'A Camp Existence': The Housing Problem in the 1940s
5. Responding to the Housing Problem in the 1940s: The War onCanada's 'Number One Emergency'
6. Conclusion
Notes
Index
