Ivan W. Thrasher
Speech to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario
February 14, 1967 | Windsor–Sandwich | Hansard pp. 515–521
Clean transcription prepared from the scanned Official Report of Debates (Hansard), Legislative Assembly of Ontario, 1967, Volume 1. Brief interjections by other members are omitted so the text reads continuously as Mr. Thrasher’s address. Spelling and punctuation are lightly normalized for readability.
Hansard page 515
Mr. Speaker, today I welcome the opportunity of again saying how thankful I am that you are still the Speaker of this 27th legislative assembly.
I would also like to welcome the hon. member for Kenora (Mr. Bernier) who recently joined the Conservative ranks. I feel akin to the member for Kenora as I too took my seat in a by-election. It would seem to me that there is something special in arriving as a government member in this fashion.
I know the Opposition was working frantically to defeat the hon. member, but as I have had the pleasure of meeting him personally, as well as meeting his wife, I know why the people of Kenora saw fit to send him to this House. May his days in this House be long and happy.
May I at this time offer my congratulations to the other members that have taken different posts in our government. I suppose it is only fitting to welcome the amicable hon. leader of the Opposition (Mr. Nixon), and it is to be hoped that he stays that way. We on the government side will do everything possible to keep him in this frame of mind.
I would also like to make a suggestion to the member that he plan a large crop on his farm this year as there is no doubt in my mind that after the next election he will be back at his farm and not the leader of the Opposition.
Hansard page 516
I would like to make a couple of comments to the member of Essex North (Mr. Reaume) about this building which was supposed to have been built in 1959, and I will say to him that as long as I am a member of this House I will see that this building is not built, if we have the prosperity that we now have in Ontario, and I will tell you why.
Right now there are several government bodies leasing space in different buildings in Windsor and the owners of these buildings are collecting taxes. Now he suggests that we take people out of these buildings and put them in a government building and make these buildings empty, and therefore, these people will not be collecting money to pay taxes. I say this is absolutely wrong.
As regards to buildings being built in Windsor, we have built many buildings at the University of Windsor. There is now on the drawing board the building of a school of applied arts and technology, costing from $10 to $15 million. There are hospital extensions going on which this government has approved. I say to him that this is the type of building we should be building — buildings that our people can use and not buildings to house or take away from buildings that we are taking taxes from.
I would like to say to the member at this time, when he says that we will get no votes down there, I would like to ask him how about my election when I got more votes than the Opposition? I say to the hon. member at this time that I do not think he will get as many votes as the man who is going to run against him, and he will not be back.
Now I do not intend to run people down here. The suggestions I am going to make tonight are suggestions for the good and improvement of our people.
Mr. Speaker, tonight I am going to speak on a very vitally important and controversial subject and one that is in the headlines very much these days. This is housing.
Now this was brought out very forcefully last Friday. I happen to have had this speech ready for some 10 days now and some of the points that I will be covering were already covered at the meeting last Friday.
However, I would like to reiterate some of these points, because I feel they are very, very important. Since I have been in the real estate profession for 16 years, a director of the Ontario association and the president of the Windsor real estate board, I feel that I am qualified to speak on this subject.
In any serious consideration of housing — that is housing which the average citizen can afford — there are two important facets.
One, the lack of serviced land, or in broader terms, sewage. There is no really great problem for water, hydro, gas and streets, although they are rather costly.
The other is financing, or in plain language money. Every book, periodical, news clipping that could be found was read on this subject, and it was discovered that nearly every person had a different idea as to the best method of handling this problem.
The Minister of Economics and Development (Mr. Randall) and the federal Minister of Labour, the Hon. J. R. Nicholson, can be congratulated for bringing together heads of municipalities at the Royal York last Friday to discuss this very important subject.
Away back in the late 1950s the OWRC formed municipalities to clean up their sewage. Very little was done. Now the fruits of procrastination come tumbling down on their heads and cries go out to senior governments to bail them out; and by our government intends to do just that and we will.
In life it is so easy to condemn and so hard to praise. Actually there are many reasons why we find ourselves with a lack of homes.
Hansard page 517
For the past two years money, for some reason or other, seemingly disappeared. However, this year our office has actually been called by four different lending institutions asking us to place mortgages. This has never happened before during the past 15 years. But I say, and say strongly, that our citizens cannot afford to pay eight per cent for the use or rental of money for homes. This is an outrageous calamity.
Back in 1955 at an industrial committee meeting, when we were attempting a $20,000 survey to tell us what was wrong with Windsor, I stated that we had two problems: one, sewers and two, proper financing. Some 12 years later we discover not only Windsor but the whole of Canada with the same problem.
In 1947 every newspaper, every speaker, was predicting that in the year 1967 we would need housing by the hundreds of thousands for our war babies, now 20 and 21 years old. They were right, but what did we do about it? Very little!
Municipalities have been very lax in not having the foresight to prepare adequate developed land for this expected increase. In housing there are two mandatory economic requirements. One relates to the economy as a whole, the other relates to individual ability to pay for shelter.
Our Canadian economy should be geared to provide enough homes plus a few more, so that we can properly house our people and at the same time keep the cost of housing down. As far as the individual’s ability to pay for shelter, we are told that many, many people need housing but do not afford this luxury? What happens if our people cannot purchase these homes once they are built — and at today’s prices they cannot. Many $20,000 to $25,000 homes are sitting empty because of too high a down payment. Somehow we must adjust our economy to allow for proper down payments and proper interest rates so that these people can fit into our economy with pride of ownership and an ability to pay for shelter.
The houses we build today and how we treat them, the form and pattern of our cities, make our economic and social life. It is in this environment that our art and culture are attained. During the next five, 10, 15 or 20 years, we will need thousands upon thousands of homes. Are we keeping up in planning studies; should we allow strip housing along our highways? I say we should not, yet day after day this is happening.
We have three standards of housing: 1. The kind of dwelling or accommodation with sufficient space and equipment for bringing up a family with decent privacy for each member; 2. The cost of producing this house based on an adequate wage for the person building the house; 3. The standard of living — a certain portion of a man’s living must go for clothing and other necessities, therefore he has only a certain proportion or percentage that can be spent on housing. If any one of these standards should be relaxed we would have no difficulty, but unfortunately they cannot.
Let us look at standard number one. A couple is married, say, in their early 20s, and have three children. This couple should have four bedrooms but unfortunately his income is probably at its lowest. This is the type of family to whom we must give help. Perhaps the family’s payments could be on an accelerated basis — as his income goes up, his payments go up.
Standard number two can be solved only if we can find methods of mass production or new materials that are less expensive. For instance, dry wall used extensively in the States and in $50,000 homes is not used to its fullest in Canada. I understand in Massachusetts, complete services cost $25 a lineal foot. Their climate is similar to ours yet it is costing us from $50 to $75 a foot and up. Surely something is wrong with our engineering to cause this discrepancy. A family should not pay over 25 per cent of its income on housing yet today many are paying 30 per cent and up. This is a serious undermining of living standards.
Our people must have proper rights and liberties. Housing is public administration; it is privately licensed; it is engineering; it is art; it is real estate and manufacturing; it is for children as well as elderly people. In essence, it is our life. The public should be better informed about two facts: 1. Income costs; 2. Housing costs. Cities should be helped to assume initiative in building homes. Serious consideration should be given to architectural design of our homes. Dinky little bedrooms should cease. The best minds in the country should concentrate on community planning and architectural design in order that future generations will benefit.
The Canadian housing starts in all areas across Canada totalled 166,565 units in 1965 and 124,000 in 1966. This was a decline of 32,000 units or 24 per cent. Ontario housing starts in all areas in Ontario dropped 52,000 units in 1966, compared with 66,000 in 1965. In Metro Toronto, dwelling starts slumped to 22,000 in 1966 and 32,000 in 1965. I point this out to show the large decline in housing starts was in Metro Toronto.
Hansard page 518
The cost of servicing raw land has skyrocketed during the past few years. I believe land, service this land, and then either sell or lease the lots. The cost of servicing lots has become prohibitive to anyone but a very large builder or developer. Supplying serviced land solves many of our problems. Only $30 million was borrowed in 1965 and $38 million in 1966 under the loans for municipal sewage treatment projects. Municipal taxpayers are being deprived of many other essential services in order to pay for mounting education costs. Developers are now being forced to agree to pay school levies before subdivisions are planned.
This problem requires deep study. Perhaps municipalities should take more extensive views regarding financial assistance under section 368F of The National Housing Act to get more homes quickly. Maybe we should consider the adequacy of septic tanks in areas where they meet all standards of health. The lagoon/sewerage is the best answer in some areas. Do we need all this filter in modern subdivisions? Just the other day I drove through a macadamized subdivision, one that was a soldier settlement 20 years ago, and I really can’t find much fault with this subdivision. I agree that curbs and what have you are probably more functional but can we afford this luxury? This could easily be compared to some of the luxuries on an automobile, but literally thousands and thousands of people are driving cars without a lot of these luxuries. I do not see why streets without curbs in residential areas cannot be acceptable.
Now that we have serviced land is it necessary to have such large lots? In today’s busy life do people want a large lot? More grass to cut; more taxes to pay. Perhaps we should make a lot deeper with less frontage if more square footage is required. We cannot afford to go sprawling across our fertile lands with two or three houses per acre. We must find a higher use for this land. One use that has been neglected of late is what was once known as the income bungalow — the one and a half storey home with an apartment above which could be rented. Let us analyze this for a moment. The family owns the downstairs; the upper can be used as a rental unit. This type of home has a multiplicity of uses. Mainly it supports the mortgage payments. We must have a greater density of homes on our land.
It is high time land use regulations were revised. This is now being encouraged by Ontario housing corporation. Ontario housing corporation is thwarted by existing municipal by-laws and this will be proven more and more as the years go by. Speed up production. We realize that there must be regulations to protect home buyers against unscrupulous builders. However, the same regulations stifle such organizations as Ontario housing corporation, which should be able to pioneer development and provide proper design. Here again is where we need the best people we can get for quick research.
Some of our housing shortage is attributable to the existence of a multiplicity of building codes and zoning standards which are enforcing in such a way as to make production of low-cost housing impossible. Average population densities should be raised to allow more units of three and four-bedroom houses. Zoning by-laws in the Metro planning area should be standard throughout.
In 1946 — and I quote Mr. Howe, Minister of Construction — the ultimate squeeze in housing shortage is still to come. In order to get out of the rather desperate situation we have gotten into, it will be necessary to build 480,000 units during the next five years.
It seems to me that today we are in a similar situation, perhaps worse.
After much analyzing, and realizing that Henry Ford, by mass production, was able to build a car that people could afford, it suddenly dawned on me that herein lies one of the answers. One does not need to be an Einstein to realize that if you order 100 carloads of lumber instead of one, or 1,000 bathtubs instead of one, the price goes drastically down per unit. This is proven in chain store business. Quantity buying brings the price down. The cost of custom building one car would be prohibitive compared to the cost of building 100,000. We must apply this same principle to house-building. Mass production does not have to be done in a factory. It can be done on the job.
However, I understand that by the fall season of 1967, a builder of prefab homes will be in full operation in western Ontario, turning out three-bedroom homes for $10,000 plus land. They expect to turn out between 2,000 and 3,000 a year. This is only a start. We must have mass production techniques on the job. If a contractor builds 500 footings for basements, the cost per unit comes down the line of houses some of the workmen, bricklayers, tile setters, etc. Building of homes must be similar to building cars if we are to keep the cost down and keep up with production.
Mr. Speaker, do you realize that almost every building in Canada will have to be replaced in one way or another during the next 50 years, plus the cost of keeping up with necessary needed expansion — a staggering thought, but nevertheless true.
Row housing and town housing seems to be popular, perhaps with a common play area. A study is now underway for a whole subdivision with private ownership of all services. This is a new concept in thinking. This would be similar to owning a large estate. Condominiums, built and owned in large numbers in the States and South America, seems to be a bad word in Canada. Why can’t we have condominiums in Ontario? This type of ownership gives a person pride of ownership at a reduced cost. Why can’t an individual, our citizens own their own apartments in a condominium? If this type of ownership works well in Europe and in South America, why not Ontario? I think we should have legislation to permit this type of ownership.
Hansard page 519
Some time ago, CMHC warned builders that they should be seeking a more independent route for their industry without constantly looking to the federal government for financial resources. Where do they think the builders and developers are going to obtain development money? The banks have practically shut their doors. Lending institutions are slow on advances. Interim money is hard to get and very expensive. This was a very inopportune statement to be made by CMHC.
Cutting off of lending by CMHC last April was a severe blow to our housing shortage and should never have occurred. The national housing association’s decision to adopt a policy of one and one-half per cent above long-term Canada bonds was, in my opinion, a wise and good one.
The Canadian real estate board has for many years been asking the federal government to make loans available for the home. At long last this is a reality. The maximum mortgage is $10,000. This means that 90 per cent of the value of the home may be financed as long as the purchased price does not exceed $11,111. I would recommend this loan be increased to $15,000. The average price of new homes sold in Metro was $26,000.
I would recommend to the federal Labour Minister, John Nicholson, and the hon. Minister of Economics and Development (Mr. Randall) that they set up an emergency committee to digest new ideas in resolving the current housing shortage. We should have on this committee top-notch architects capable of coming up with brand new ideas on building construction and materials.
We have across Canada numerous tract developers and realtors who could contribute much to this study.
Initiative must be made for workmen to turn out more work for a dollar. The other day I visited Bloomfield Hills in Detroit and in a $9,000 lot, a two-storey home with approximately 2,700 square feet was selling for $34,000, including dishwasher, fridge, stove, four bedrooms, two and a half baths, double garage, full basement, large family room, fireplace, and so on. This is less than $10 a foot. Why can we not do the same here? The same house here would cost upwards of $20 a foot. We must devise better construction methods to bring down the cost. Many of our construction workers are out of work and more will be added to their ranks unless we get construction moving fast.
Man must live within his means. What woman would not like a new stove, fridge and dishwasher in her kitchen? But can they afford these luxuries? Joe next door has them; why cannot we, regardless of the cost? But up goes the mortgage payment. These luxuries create an unrealistic picture in relation to land costs. This grave area should be controlled through family budget and not through mortgage payment.
Hundreds of housing units are removed from the market each year through demolition for urban renewal and private development. This means that many families have to move to other homes, and with no homes, where are they going? More than 3,000 housing units were removed from the city of Toronto in the last three years. These homes are removed without the planners knowing or caring where these people are going to go. Where are these evicted and expropriated residents going to be located? Are we sure that these dwellings in urban renewal areas are blighted to the point where they cannot be rehabilitated? I am not so sure. I say we should not demolish these homes until we have other houses for these people to move into. At the present time, several programmes involve a net loss in housing and so add to the housing shortage.
It is important that deteriorated houses should be removed, but it is also important that at this time in our housing programme we should have an increase in housing units. If the present time all this is doing is causing a pressure on the housing supply. Perhaps we should only have renewal programmes when we have a surplus of homes. I should think the home improvement loans and home extension loans under section 24 of The National Housing Act could be extended to perhaps 20 years, and perhaps the maximum amount of, say, $7,500. This larger amount would provide a form of secondary financing for those wishing to rebuild in deteriorated areas.
Hansard page 520
Here might be a very good place to mention that municipal tax payments and interest payments on houses should be a deductible item in calculating our income tax. It is time we stopped penalizing our people for improving their properties through taxation.
Many builders and developers have cried bitterly over the long, tedious delays between the time it takes to plan a subdivision until final approval. Herein lies the real culprit. This long delay, cost of lawyer fees, cost of holding land and attending meetings is all added into the cost to the builder and then to the buyer of the house. I know of one builder, unable to draw any money with $100,000 invested, and unless help comes quickly he may lose his land because of these costly delays. Let us cut out some of the red tape.
Federal and provincial sales tax must be removed, in my opinion. The central mortgage and housing corporation has accumulated more than $150 million in mortgage insurance funds and is adding to it at several million a year. I would suggest that this is a very good time to reduce this rate from two per cent to perhaps even one-half a point. Why do we need to build up this mortgage insurance fund to the millions and millions of dollars? It has certainly been proven in the past that there have been very few foreclosures.
The total cost of construction can be reduced by shortening the time of building homes in quantity. In certain areas basements should be dry wall instead of wet plaster. The $34,000 home I mentioned had dry wall and it was impossible to tell the difference. Prefinished material should be used, such as windows, whole walls, and on-site and off-site prefabs.
Lending agents should advance funds faster, with some control, to pay accounts. An example of this could be a builder starting 300 homes. To cut costs he should be building 50 at a time, but it seems impossible to get his draws fast enough to build homes in this fashion. Some method must be made to allow the builder to make faster draws to pay his accounts. Perhaps some arrangement can be made with the bank with guarantees by the government.
The high cost of interest rates must be added to the cost of the house. We must get interim financing at lower rates. This is very important. All it does is to increase the value of each individual home as well as causing many contractors to go into bankruptcy.
Mr. Speaker, I have suggested many ways in which to solve our housing problem and I would like to reiterate some of the main points that I have covered: 1. Land servicing and the use of lots; 2. Costs of outmoded land use and regulations; 3. Mass-produced homes and appliances; 4. Labour costs; 5. Public demand for more sophisticated homes and appliances; 6. Urban renewal; 8. Faster liaison between government and municipalities; 9. Removal of federal and provincial sales tax; 10. Lowering of the mortgage fund insurance.
These are some of the more important ways in which we can lower the price of our homes for our citizens. Really, when we boil this all down, we have two things to do. 1. Service the land; 2. Provide money to our citizens so that they can have homes with monthly payments that they can afford. Let us correlate these items fast and get our citizens into low-cost, low-down-payment homes.
Mr. Speaker, there is another point that I would like to bring up at this time and it has to do with apartments. There have been a great many complaints directed to me and to my fellow hon. member for Lakeshore (Mr. Eagleson) with respect to security deposits paid by apartment tenants. At the present time it is a generally accepted practice for a landlord to request the first and last months’ rent, plus what is termed a security deposit.
I will explain this to you for a moment. In Toronto alone we have 125,000 apartments, and something like 43,000 duplexes and row housing units. The lessee has to put up $100. At this rate, Mr. Speaker, the landlords in Toronto are holding $16,800,000 of other people’s money, and I think this is really on the low side. This is the amount that is kept by the landlords, and after the lease expires, the apartment is looked over and the condition of the apartment is determined. If it is felt that it is not in proper condition, the cost of any damage is deducted from the security deposit. Quite often people have told me that they received nothing back from this deposit, even though the damage to the apartment was the result of ordinary wear and tear. Quite often it is not worth suing for.
I feel that these deposits should bear interest and that this interest be similar to the bank deposit rate. This amount of interest should be credited to the tenant’s account. At the present time, there are hundreds of thousands of apartments rented in Ontario. Many of these carry the security deposit rider. This means that there are millions of dollars in developers’ hands at the present time, which these developers are using and perhaps investing themselves. Surely, it is sensible, then, that the tenant obtain interest on these funds. This money belongs to the tenants, and surely some form of trust should be created with respect to these funds.
These funds should be protected in some manner. What happens if the landlord goes bankrupt? The lease states that the last month’s rental is prepaid, but perhaps the tenant is vulnerable with respect to these funds. At the least, there should be interest given to the tenant at regular bank interest rates.
Perhaps the landlords should be required to set up trust funds for these amounts to guarantee to the tenant that the security deposit, plus interest, will be available at the end of the lease. I would like to make a suggestion, Mr. Speaker, that the lessee and the lessor each have the right to set up an arbitrator and the two of them can appoint another person in the case of a controversy.
Hansard page 521
Mr. Speaker, I feel I would be remiss in my duty as a member if I did not mention my feelings toward physical education at this time. For the past two sessions I have spoken quite forcefully on this subject, in respect of what both the federal and provincial governments are doing towards physical education and training. We read daily that some of our young people are competing quite favourably throughout the world in sports, but this is only a drop in the bucket compared to what we as a nation should be doing for our youth.
Mr. Speaker, I have a long-range plan regarding physical training. Let us take two boys or girls, say age six. One gets physical training throughout his or her school years until say, the age of 20 or 25. The other gets little or none. I say and I say emphatically that by the time these two bodies reach 50 years old the amount of time spent in and the cost of visiting doctors or hospitals could be tenfold or even more, comparing one to the other.
The point I am trying to make, Mr. Speaker, is that future generations will not have to pay our astronomical hospital bills if we have the foresight to train our youth in physical training. The best brain in the world is useless without a healthy body to transport it.
CAN EXERCISE HELP YOUR HEART?
I say let us begin this physical training on a large-scale now.
In today’s Toronto Daily Star, in no less than three places, physical training was brought out quite forcefully: once on page 4 by Gary Lautens: “I’ve never felt better in my life, thanks to physical fitness programmes. There times a week I go to the gym. I run; I do push-ups; I play basketball. You see, my wife cannot keep up with me anymore.”
He asked his wife why she was tired all the time and told her she would not be if she went to physical fitness classes.
And on page 7:
Down neighbourhood streets, in parks and playgrounds, over the open road and on high school and college tracks, middle-aged men, sedentary professionals and housewives are running for their lives.
The “community jog” is more than an expression of togetherness. It is the newest hope for retarding onset of cardiovascular disease.
On page 41, the full page was given to Mrs. Dennis Mobbs, on developing a recreational programme, filling the needs from age six to 106.
I only point out these newspaper remarks to illustrate that seemingly our citizens are awakening to the fact that physical training goes with longevity and freedom from disease. I say we in the Ontario government, as well as the federal government, should create an overall plan to provide facilities for our people to encourage them to participate in a physical fitness programme.
I sincerely hope his committee will bring the programme prepared by the Kingston member (Mr. Apps) to our people in the near future.
Source
Official Report of Debates (Hansard), Legislative Assembly of Ontario, Volume 1, February 14, 1967, pp. 515–521. Internet Archive identifier: v1hansard1967ontauoft. The Internet Archive record identifies the publisher as the Legislative Assembly of Ontario and notes that the volume may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes.
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