Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development: History, Comparative Context, Prospects

North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development: History, Comparative Context, Prospects

By Jim Silver

June 2006 ISBN: 0-88627-464-8 Acknowledgements

For their various contributions to this Slobodeski; and Tom Yauk. I also want project, I am grateful to the following to express my appreciation to the many people: Carolyn Acker; David Burley; Joy people who agreed to be interviewed for Goertzen; Janice Goodman; Matt Ham- this project, and to Claudette Michel, ilton; David Henry; Michael Kurek; who did a wonderful job of interviewing. Claire Laterveer; Alison Lazaruk; Darren Lezubski; John Loxley; Nanette McKay; I am happy to acknowledge the gener- Shauna MacKinnon; Paul Neilson; Mat- ous financial support of the University thew Rogers; Norman Rowen; Greg of Winnipeg Innovative Projects Fund.

About the Author

Jim Silver is a Professor of Politics at the tives, and the author of In Their Own Voices: University of Winnipeg, a Board member Urban Aboriginal Community Development of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alterna- (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2006).

This report is available free of charge from the CCPA website at http://www.policyalternatives.ca. Printed copies may be ordered through the Manitoba Office for a $10 fee. North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development: History, Comparative Context, Prospects By Jim Silver

Table of Contents

2 Executive Summary 5 Introduction 7 Part One: Winnipeg’s Historic North End 7 a. The Pre-Second World War North End 11 b. Post-Second World War Changes in the North End 12 c. Housing Problems in the Post-War Era 16 d. Urban Renewal—At Last 23 Part Two: The US Experience With Public Housing 23 a. The Origins of Public Housing in the USA 24 b. The Early Promise of Public Housing 25 c. The Deterioration of American Public Housing 30 d. HOPE VI 37 Part Three: The Canadian Experience With Public Housing 37 a. The Origins of Public Housing in Canada 37 b. The Rise and Fall of Urban Renewal in Canada 39 c. The Power and Danger of Popular Discourse 41 d. The Early Promise of Public Housing 42 e. The Problems With Public Housing Now 45 f. The Redevelopment of Regent Park 47 g. The Explanations for the Problems 49 Part Four: Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development: 1967-2006 49 a. Problems in the Development Today 56 b. Evidence that Things were Good at the Beginning. 59 c. What Has Been Happening Lately? 63 Part Five: Conclusions 66 Part Six: Recommendations 70 References

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 1 North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development: History, Comparative Context, Prospects By Jim Silver

Executive Summary

This paper examines North End Winni- The story of the Lord Selkirk Park Hous- peg’s Lord Selkirk Park public housing de- ing Development is best seen in the con- velopment. It surveys the history of Win- text of the history of Winnipeg’s North nipeg’s North End, and the historic Salter- End. The North End was originally the Jarvis neighbourhood where Lord Selkirk home of the mostly Eastern European Park now stands. It describes the debates workers who fueled the city’s great eco- and struggles leading to Winnipeg’s first nomic boom of the early 20th century. urban renewal project, which involved the They located in the North End where the bulldozing of Salter-Jarvis and the build- jobs then were, in small, cheaply-built ing of Lord Selkirk Park. It analyses and houses on cramped lots constructed by compares the post-war experience with developers looking for quick profits. In- large, inner city public housing projects adequate housing has always been a in the USA, and in Canada, especially North End problem. In addition, the pre- Toronto’s Regent Park. And in this broad, Second World War North End and its resi- historical context, it discusses the experi- dents were stigmatized by the city’s An- ence of Lord Selkirk Park since its estab- glo majority and Anglo ruling class. De- lishment in 1967, and the revitalization ef- spite the rich and vibrant culture created forts now being made—led by the North by the largely Eastern European and Jew- End Community Renewal Corporation. ish workers of the North End, they were discriminated against, referred to dispar- The paper argues that while large, inner agingly as ‘hunkies’, ‘bohunks’, ‘polacks’ city public housing projects like Lord Sel- and more, while the North End was kirk Park have everywhere been plagued starved of the public resources needed to with problems, the cause of the problems improve the housing stock and life is not public housing itself. The cause of chances of its residents. the problems associated with public housing is that they have become ‘housing of When the combination of post-Second last resort’ for very low-income people, World War suburbanization and the relax- and therefore home to a highly concen- ing of discrimination directed at Eastern trated and often racialized form of pov- Europeans and Jews made relocation pos- erty. This in turn is attributable to dramatic sible, vast numbers of those most able to changes in North America’s urban politi- do so left the North End for the suburbs. cal economy over the last quarter-century The already inadequate housing deterio- and more, and associated changes in gov- rated further. Much was bought up by ernment policies. The paper concludes slum landlords uninterested in mainte- that Lord Selkirk Park could become, for nance and repairs. Those people in the low-income inner city families, a place of worst financial circumstances and with opportunity and hope, rather than a place the fewest economic prospects congre- of poverty and despair. gated where cheap housing was most

2 North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development readily available. The worst of these ar- centrations of racialized poverty. This pa- eas was around Jarvis Avenue off Main per argues that because public housing Street, and this—the Salter-Jarvis area— was linked to ‘slum’ removal, it was lo- became home to Winnipeg’s first urban cated in inner cities. Inner cities through- renewal project, the Lord Selkirk Park out North America suffered from the Housing Development. process of suburbanization, which resulted in the ‘hollowing out’ of the inner From the outset there were problems. The city—those most able to move did so; busi- still healthy part of the neighbourhood nesses and social infrastructure fol- was bulldozed; most of those relocated lowed—leaving behind those least finan- did not experience improved housing; cially able to move. This was followed by and the new Development was starved of the dramatic economic restructuring of the social spending that was needed to the past 30 years and more, which in- make it a success—as had always been the cluded a de-industrialization which re- case in the North End. moved from inner cities the very kinds of Despite this, the first tenants in the Lord decently-paid jobs that would otherwise Selkirk Park Housing Development were have enabled many of those now among happy with their new accommodations. the poor to pull themselves out of poverty. This has been the experience every- In Winnipeg, at the front end of this con- where in North America—large, inner tinent-wide process, beginning in the city public housing projects worked well early 1960s, Aboriginal people began in their early years. slowly at first, and then in waves, to move When the problems emerged, it was not to the city. Most were poorly prepared for because of public housing as such; it was modern urban life, having lived in rural because of broader forces. These can be and often remote communities without thought of in terms of two levels of analy- adequate educational opportunities and sis. First, public housing has become without much experience in the paid la- ‘housing of last resort’, concentrating large bour force, and having been subjected to numbers of the poorest of the poor. It is the damage of colonization. Faced with the concentration of poverty that is the unrelenting discrimination and racism— problem, not public housing. The concen- a constant in Winnipeg’s history—upon tration of poverty was the result of a proc- their arrival in the city, they congregated ess—the pattern of which is everywhere where housing was least expensive—in the same—by which changes in policy the inner city, and particularly in the resulted in public housing projects becom- Salter-Jarvis area. The combination of ing the home not of low-income working their lack of education and experience, the families, with a minority of tenants on damage caused by colonization, the dis- social assistance, as was initially the case, appearance of well-paid jobs, and the dis- but of families on social assistance, with crimination and racism that they faced, a minority of tenants in the workforce, led to high rates of poverty and associated as is now the case. Public housing problems. These were made the worse by projects became home to concentrated, the continued inadequacy of public in- racialized poverty, and to all of the prob- vestment aimed at poverty alleviation, an lems associated with concentrated and inadequacy accentuated by the public racialized poverty. funding cutbacks that started in earnest A still broader level of analysis involves a in the late 1970s–early 1980s in response consideration of what caused these con- to the changing global economy.

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 3 It is these broader issues—the changes in America—public housing is not the prob- the global economy and its de-industrial- lem. On the contrary, public housing izing effects, the cutbacks in public spend- ought to be seen as part of the solution. It ing, the severe disadvantages faced by a is part of the solution because, given ad- growing urban Aboriginal population— equate social supports, it can provide good that led to the concentration of racialized quality low-income rental housing at a poverty in Winnipeg’s inner city, just as it time when that is in perilously short sup- led to concentrated racialized poverty and ply. Second, it makes clear that the prob- its associated problems in large urban cen- lems seen to be associated with public tres throughout North America. Public housing have deep roots that go far back housing, located as it was in the inner city, in time, and thus will not be solved was in effect asked to respond to the dam- quickly. Any solution in Lord Selkirk Park age created by these broader forces. And must of necessity be a long-term solution, so public housing became ‘housing of last one that promotes and supports tenants’ resort’ for those most adversely affected involvement, and builds their capacities by the dramatic changes of the late 20th and their self-confidence and self-esteem. century. To conclude from all of this that Third, it makes clear that this is a path public housing is the problem is to con- now being embarked upon in the Devel- fuse cause and effect. opment, led by the North End Commu- nity Renewal Corporation. The work done The broadly comparative, historical analy- to date is no guarantee of future success. sis advanced in this paper is important Much hard work remains. But finally, af- now for several reasons. First, it makes ter decades of neglect, the Lord Selkirk clear that—contrary to what has been ar- Park housing development is moving, gued by those in power throughout North however slowly, in a positive direction.

4 North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development: History, Comparative Context, Prospects By Jim Silver

Introduction

Winnipeg’s North End has suffered a cen- The people who first moved into the De- tury-long experience with inadequate velopment were happy with their new housing. When Eastern European immi- housing, despite the many flaws in the grants poured into the North End at the urban renewal process leading to its turn of the last century, 100 years ago, creation. Yet now, 40 years later, the De- developers slapped up quickly-con- velopment has a reputation that is structed, cheaply-made housing on largely negative. A stigma is attached to smaller than normal-sized lots, often dis- those who live there. connected from sewer and water lines, What happened? How did the Develop- and with inadequate provision for recrea- ment come to be the place that it is today? tional spaces. Large profits were made. How does its experience compare with the When the post-Second World War proc- experience of similar public housing ini- ess of suburbanization led to large num- tiatives in the USA and elsewhere in bers of people of Eastern European de- Canada? What strategies are now being scent leaving the North End for the new adopted beyond Winnipeg to revitalize housing and larger lots of the suburbs, the public housing projects? And what, if any- already inadequate housing stock deterio- thing, can be done here in Winnipeg to rated further. Much fell into the hands of revitalize the Development? absentee landlords. North End housing conditions worsened. New waves of in- The central argument of this paper is that, ternal migrants began to arrive in Winni- despite all the negative issues generally peg in the 1960s, and located where hous- associated with public housing projects— ing was least expensive—in the North Lord Selkirk Park included—the root of End. Governments at all levels were re- the problems lies not with public housing luctant to invest in public housing, pre- as such. The root of the problems lies in ferring to leave the provision of hous- the severe concentration of poverty in in- ing largely to the forces of the market. ner city public housing projects, which in The housing market did not serve the turn is the consequence of deeper forces— North End well. in particular, changes in the political economy of North American cities, and In the 1960s, after years and even decades in government responses to these of delay, the three levels of government changes. Public housing is not the cause finally were pushed into creating public of these problems. Rather, it has become housing, including the Lord Selkirk Park the ‘housing of last resort’ for the victims Housing Development, located in what of these broader forces. What follows had once been the heart of the Jewish from this analysis is that, far from be- North End. The Development, as it is now ing torn down, as is now being done in called by those in the area, is a large, public housing projects across North 1960s-style public housing development. America, Lord Selkirk Park Housing De-

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 5 velopment should be and can be re- Selkirk Park Housing Development in the claimed as a site of and a force for com- mid-1960s. In Part Two we examine the munity revitalization. US experience, and in Part Three the Ca- nadian experience—especially Toronto’s This paper reaches this conclusion by un- Regent Park—with public housing. In Part dertaking a broadly comparative histori- Four we examine changes in the Lord Sel- cal analysis of public housing in Winni- kirk Park Housing Development from its peg, in large American cities, and in To- opening in 1967 to the present. In Parts ronto. In Part One the paper examines Five and Six we offer some conclusions some aspects of North End Winnipeg’s and recommendations, based on the history, leading to the building of the Lord analysis developed in the paper.

6 North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development Part One: Winnipeg’s Historic North End a. The Pre-Second World War one of the rules of good design were fol- North End lowed” (Artibise, 1975, p. 161). More than half the houses were not connected to In the late 19th century the indigenous in- the city’s water supply system. Infant habitants of what are now the Canadian mortality in the North End was 248.6 per prairies were pushed off their traditional 1000 births in 1913, compared to 116.8 lands and moved onto reserves, in order per 1000 in the West and South ends to turn the prairies over to the growing of (Artibise, 1977, p. 66). Typhoid and wheat. To grow and transport the wheat smallpox were concentrated in the required a massive infrastructure of rail- North End; in 1904 and 1905 Winnipeg ways, bridges, grain elevators and towns, had more cases of, and more deaths the construction of which generated an from, typhoid than any city in North industrial boom centred in Winnipeg. At America (Artibise, 1977, p. 104). the heart of the boom were the railways: vast rail yards, repair shops, freight sheds, J.S. Woodsworth, Director of the All Peo- office buildings, power houses, stores, ples’ Mission on Stella Avenue, now the scrap yards and stations were constructed North End Community Ministry, con- in the city. Construction materials and ducted a study in 1913 showing that “a work clothes were made in Winnipeg to normal standard of living” in Winnipeg supply the needs of farms and railways, required an income of at least $1200 per and the city became a major wholesaler, year. But few people in the North End supplying a hinterland stretching from were earning that much, and “large num- the Lakehead to the Pacific. Metal shops bers of workmen are receiving under $600 and foundries manufactured the machin- per year, many under $500, half of what ery for country elevators and structural is necessary” (Artibise, 1975, p. 187). steel for railways and bridges, while the Poverty-level wages caused many prob- produce of the farms became the raw lems. Houses were overcrowded. With material for flour milling, meat packing overcrowding came insanitary conditions and a host of related industrial activities. and health problems. Food consumption The rail yards—noisy, dirty and bustling was inadequate, leading frequently to with energy and activity—cut the city in undernourishment. Children were often half. The area north of the yards became forced to work long before the completion the North End. It was here that the immi- of high school to supplement their fami- grants who flooded the booming city af- ly’s meagre income, a fact considered by ter 1896 located, in such large numbers authorities to be the “source of much tru- that the North End came to be known as ancy and juvenile crime”. Artibise (1975, the ‘Foreign Quarter’. In the North End p. 16) describes the North End of the pre- could be heard all the languages of Eu- 1914 era as being characterized by: “Over- rope—Ukrainian, Yiddish, Polish, Rus- crowded houses and tenements, lack of sian, Hungarian, German and more. sanitary installations, dirty back-yards, muddy, foul-smelling streets, and poor Living conditions were hard. Developers, lighting conditions”. seeing easy profits, hastily erected cheaply-built houses squeezed tightly to- Typically such problems and conditions gether on narrow, 25 or 33 foot lots—“not were blamed on the moral failings of the

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 7 poor. The Associated Charities Bureau women in vaster petticoats”. By con- wrote in 1912 that “the large majority of trast, the lead character, a Hungarian applications for relief are caused by thrift- immigrant living in the North End, vis- lessness, mismanagement, unemploy- its Crescentwood, the south end home ment due to incompetence, intemper- of the Anglo-Saxon ‘elite’ who domi- ance, immorality, desertion of the fam- nated the economic, social and political ily and domestic quarrels”. For this rea- life of the city. son it was thought wrong to provide ad- “In a daze he walked down the street. equate levels of social assistance to those The boulevards ran wide and spacious in need. Doing so, argued the Associated to the very doors of the houses. And Charities Bureau, would “simply make these houses were like palaces, great it easier for the parents to shirk their and stately, surrounded by their own responsibilities or lead a dissolute life” private parks and gardens. On every (Artibise, 1975, p. 188). side there was something to wonder The issue, however, was less a matter of at” (Marlyn, 1957, pp. 64-65). shirking responsibilities than of the pov- Little wonder that Artibise (1975, p. 160), erty-level wages earned in the North End. in his masterful social history of Winni- Most North End residents were working, peg, should conclude that: “Winnipeg in many for the railways and associated in- 1914 was a severely divided city, both geo- dustries, others as builders, or in factories graphically and socially”. and small shops and stores. People in the North End worked hard; they were the Those in the city’s south end reacted working class. The problem, as scornfully and even hatefully to the East- Woodsworth had showed, was that wages ern European, working class immigrants were too low—a problem that echoes of the North End. across the decades to today’s North End “the Slavs were the despised ‘men in (Just Incomes Coalition, 2005). sheepskin coats’, ‘dumb hunkies’, Winnipeg then, as now, was deeply seg- ‘bohunks’, ‘garlic-eaters’, ‘Polacks’, regated—a city divided—with the North ‘drunkards’—and on and on; the End cut off from the rest of the city by Germans were the much hated en- the vast CPR yards, and distinguished emies of the last war; and finally, the from the rest of the city by its ‘foreign’ Jews faced extreme anti-Semitism, character. As a 1912 publication put it: ranging from ethnic slurs, housing “For many years the North End... was covenants which excluded them from practically a district apart from the city”, certain parts of the city and a quota and “those who located north of the system which kept their children out tracks were not of a desirable character” of the medical school at University of (Artibise, 1975, p. 160). Manitoba, to actual violence against their persons and property” The problem then, as now, was poverty (Mochoruk, 2000, pp. 5-6). and inequality. John Marlyn’s novel, Un- der the Ribs of Death, is set in the early part Such discriminatory and even hateful at- of the century in Winnipeg’s North End, titudes served to reinforce the geographic which is described as being “a mean and segregation of the North End. dirty clutter... a howling chaos... a heap Yet, the North End was home to much that seething with unwashed children, sick was positive. Selkirk Avenue was a thriv- men in grey underwear, vast sweating ing commercial centre, filled with a daz-

8 North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development zling variety of stores and shops, whose was, early in the 20th century, the heart owners typically spoke several of the East- of the Jewish North End. Jim Blanchard ern European languages used by their (2005, p. 198) has recently provided a North End customers, and made credit rich and detailed description of this available when needed. Small grocery neighbourhood: stores could be found on most North End “In 1912 the densest concentration of street corners, their owners living above Jewish residents was just north of the or behind the stores. On Main Street, be- CPR yards in the district bounded by tween Flora and Stella, across the street Jarvis and Selkirk avenues and Main from today’s Lord Selkirk Park housing and Robinson streets. Here, almost development, was a thriving public mar- every second house was home to a ket: “That whole area was just one big Jewish family, with the concentration market place. The farmers would come of Jewish homes being greater on the with their trucks and wagons and they’d south side of the neighbourhood, along line them up. You could go there before Jarvis and Dufferin avenues. The area winter... buy your carrots and cucumbers, was known to some non-Jews as tomatoes” (Quoted in August, 2000, p. 9). Jerusalem and to others it was ‘Jew Almost everything was available in the Town’. Among Jews it was often called North End, and could be reached on foot Mitzraim, which is the Hebrew word or by streetcar. In 1925, on Selkirk Avenue for the Egypt of the captivity: a place alone, in the five blocks between Salter from which to escape. In 1912 this and Parr, there were 128 businesses—in- district was the centre of a thriving cluding Oretzki’s Department Store, and energetic Jewish community known as the Eaton’s of the North End, with its own synagogues, schools, located initially at 493 Selkirk Avenue and social agencies, newspapers, a later spanning from 487 to 493 Selkirk complex political landscape, and Avenue, the current site of the Winnipeg a Yiddish theatre”. Education Centre, relocated to Selkirk The Beth Jacob Synagogue, serving the Avenue in 2005. An old-time resident of largest Orthodox congregation in western the North End said: Canada, was located on Schultz Street, “Selkirk Avenue was a [hive] of activity. between Jarvis and Dufferin, immediately Saturday night was a way of life. south of where Lord Selkirk Park is now People would take their families. The located, while the Talmud Torah School big event was looking at the stores and was on the north-west corner of what is shopping and chewing sunflower now Lord Selkirk Park, at Flora and seeds. And they didn’t necessarily Charles (Blanchard, 2005, p. 193). The come in to buy merchandise.... Money streets near what is now the Development they didn’t have. Everybody was in the were inhabited by Jews and others from same boat. So a walk down the street Eastern Europe, especially Ukrainians and with an ice cream cone and a bag of Poles, who did a variety of jobs: sunflower seeds and walking into a “The streets south of Selkirk Avenue store like Oretzki’s was definitely a were inhabited by working class and way to spend an evening” (quoted in lower-middle class families. On Flora August, 2005, p. 20). Avenue between King and Salter, The area immediately around what is among other people, there lived three now the Lord Selkirk Park development labourers, several caretakers, two

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 9 clerks, a warehouseman, and a ped- European immigrant as ‘uncultured’, dler. There were also tradesmen, some as suffering from cultural deprivation, with shops on Main: a blacksmith, a many of the North End inhabitants printer, a tinsmith, a plumber, and a brought with them to the new country harness maker. There were three an extensive cultural heritage of tailors, one of whom, Hyman Gunn, ancient traditions... [from which] they was a manufacturer employing other derived a dignity denied them by the tailors in his factory on Logan. Living dominant society”. next to Gunn, at number 309 Flora, in Most of this North End richness was un- the other half of a duplex, which Gunn known to the largely Anglo-Saxon south may have owned, was Rabbi end of the city. The segregation promoted Kahanovitch of Beth Jacob Synagogue. ignorance, and lack of tolerance. As The Rabbi always lived on Flora, first Artibise (1975, p. 173) describes it: “Many at 309 and later at 281, until his death Winnipegers never lived in mixed in 1945. On Stella Avenue, the street neighborhoods and thus failed to develop south of Flora, lived people with a the tolerance which must exist in such similar mixture of occupations: six areas.... many residents escaped the de- labourers, eight clerks, and a mands of respect for different goals and number of tradesmen” (Blanchard, values”. Among Winnipeg’s elite, the 2005, p. 205). segregation promoted not only igno- A remarkably wide range of social, cul- rance and lack of respect, but also the tural and educational organizations were callous attitudes that were expressed in built in the North End early in the cen- public policies that ignored the needs of tury. It is not an exaggeration to say that the North End: the North End of the time was a thriving “Sheltered in their lavish homes in cultural centre. There were newspapers Armstrong’s Point, Fort Rouge and published in many European languages, Wellington Crescent, and engaged in a churches and synagogues, music and social and business life centred around drama societies, literary associations, the Manitoba Club, the Board of Trade sports clubs, a wide range of alternative and the St. Charles Country Club, the schools which kept alive traditional cul- governing elite’s callous stance was tures and languages. There were frequent often the result of ignorance.... for the public speeches, dramatic productions, most part they gave little serious musical events. A thriving co-operative thought to the social problems in their sector emerged, meeting the needs of midst” (Artibise, 1977, p. 54). many North End residents. Labour tem- ples were constructed, mutual aid socie- Those in positions of authority looked ties created. And radical politics of a be- upon the residents of the North End with wildering variety of kinds emerged out of scorn, and “spent only a small fraction of the socially and culturally thriving, yet their budgets on such community serv- economically disadvantaged, North End. ices as sanitation, health departments or welfare” (Artibise, 1981, p. 216). The result was a real sense of pride about The historic, pre-Second World War North being a North Ender. As Roz Usisken (p. End was a remarkable place. The poverty 18) has described it: was deep; the deprivation severe. Segre- “Contrary to middle class, dominant gation and discrimination prevailed. stereotypes which depicted the East Those with economic and political power

10 North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development looked upon the North End and its peo- Those who left the North End were, for ple disrespectfully, even scornfully and the most part, those who were doing rela- hatefully, and such attitudes found ex- tively well economically. Many were sec- pression in government policies which ond and third generation Eastern Euro- further disadvantaged the North End. But pean immigrants who had grown up in there was also energy, and creativity, and the North End, and had done well in a strong sense of community in the North school, and/or landed good jobs in the End. For many people it was, for all its post-war economic boom. One long-time hardships, a good place to be poor in. North End resident described this post- war process by saying: “This was the poor part of town you know—so you wanted b. Post-Second World War to get away from it” (August, 2004, p. 38). Changes in the North End This was made possible, among other In the post-Second World War period the things, by the fact that the discrimination North End changed dramatically, al- experienced earlier in the century was be- though the seeds of change had been ginning to dissipate: “during the 1950s present earlier. Large numbers left the large numbers of non-Anglo-Saxons ac- North End—part of the continent-wide quired a relative degree of affluence and process of suburbanization, a process were accorded by the charter group in- heavily subsidized by governments. Be- creasing degrees of respect and tolerance” tween 1951 and 1961 the number of Jews (Artibise, 1977, p. 174). Occupations like in the North End, for example, declined medicine and law, closed to non-Anglo- by half, from 12,389 to 6536; the number Saxons throughout the first part of the cen- of Ukrainians dropped by 10 percent tury, were opened, and these opportuni- (Artibise, 1977, p. 174). In 1941, 2.4 per- ties were seized upon by many of Eastern cent of Jews in Winnipeg lived in the sub- European origin who had grown up in the urbs; in 1961, 44.2 percent lived in the sub- North End. Many of the North End’s most urbs—most in West Kildonan, River skilled and talented sons and daughters Heights or Tuxedo (Rosenberg, 1961). The left the North End for the bigger spaces decline continued for decades, as more and newer homes of the suburbs. and more people who could afford to do As they left, the thriving commercial life so left for the suburbs. One study found of the North End atrophied. Children that from 1941 to 1976 the population of chose not to take over the small corner the inner city as a whole declined by 29 grocery stores that their parents had percent, while the population of the sub- owned, and in the back or on the top of urbs grew by 200 percent (Johnston, 1979, which many had lived. It is not hard to pp. 39-49). Another determined that from see why. Even before the post-war exodus, 1941 to 2001, while the population of Win- life as a small North End shopkeeper was nipeg as a whole was growing from difficult. Most were poor. There were too 300,000 to 674,000, the population of the many stores; not enough purchasing inner city declined from 153,700 to 93,800, power. And the bigger outlets were start- or from 51.2 percent to 13.9 percent of ing to appear on Selkirk Avenue even be- Winnipeg’s total population (Lezubski, fore the War. As early as 1925: Silver and Black, 2000, p. 30). In short, there was a massive movement of people “The first Ladies Ready-to-Wear shop out of the North End, and the inner city opened on Selkirk Avenue—offering more generally, to the suburbs. manufactured garments, where previously on Selkirk, ladies’ clothing had

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 11 been available primarily at dress- associations and sports clubs, the public makers’ shops.... The arrival of speeches, ethnic newspapers and radical factory-made clothing and shoe politics, all atrophied. The North End shops, and a chain grocery store in changed, and changed dramatically. the North End’s business milieu, were the harbingers of problems to c. Housing Problems in the come for the colourful array of small Post-War Era shops” (August, 2004, p. 19). What did not change was the shortage of By the mid-1930s Safeway and Jewel good quality affordable housing in Win- stores had moved onto Selkirk Avenue; nipeg’s North End. In 1942 the Winnipeg in the post-Second World War period Tribune wrote that “a housing shortage of cars were more readily affordable, and unprecedented scale was reported in the businesses shifted from the North End 1941 housing survey”. Mayor John Queen, to the suburbs—parallel to the move- who repeatedly called for action on this ment of people. front, added: “Housing conditions are so “Lots of stores closed. See, we used to bad in our city that we cannot neglect the have a lot of corner grocery stores... situation any longer. There is a constant What really influenced the change violation of health bylaws but we cannot were the big stores, you know, the put the people out: they have no where to Safeways. That’s what made the big go” (Winnipeg Tribune (WT), Jan. 28, 1942). change. And then of course the malls This theme—the inadequacy of housing started. That’s what really tore every- for low-income people in Winnipeg, and thing apart, that’s what broke up the particularly in the North End—is a con- type of community life that you had in stant throughout the 20th century. The pri- the area. The little corner groceries vate for-profit housing industry has never closed down—couldn’t compete. They produced enough good quality, affordable couldn’t compete” (quoted in August, housing for low-income people to meet 2004, pp. 36-37). the demand. As a result, large numbers The relocation of large numbers of skilled, of Winnipegers have been poorly housed. working age people from the North End That continues today. Yet the City, in the to the suburbs, and the demise of the once- 1940s as today, did not have the fiscal ca- thriving, small store commercial life cen- pacity to solve the problem. If government tred on Selkirk Avenue, took its toll on the was to intervene to fill the low-income rich social and cultural life of the North housing gap left by the private market, the End. It too, began to atrophy: federal government had to provide a part of the funding. In the 1940s they did not. “The Halls began to suffer and the A 1947 fact-finding Board reported to City organizations suffered as well. There Council that 7000 additional housing units was a Jewish synagogue right over were needed. here on McGregor and Magnus, where “the provision of low-rental shelter is a there is [now] a filling station. And chronic, country-wide problem and its there was a Jewish school right next solution can be achieved only on a door. That’s gone. People moved and national basis.... So far, the federal so the churches... began to disappear” government has refused to recognize (quoted in August, 2004, p. 39). the provision of low-rental housing as The drama and music societies, literary a national responsibility. The munici-

12 North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development palities, by and large, have not End. As the Tribune (Sept. 15, 1949) put it, sufficient financial strength to meet while the market, heavily supported by the responsibility alone” (WT, governments, worked well to produce sin- July 4, 1947). gle-family dwellings for those who could afford to buy a house, “it still remains true In 1947 the City built a 100 unit emergency that the lower third of the housing de- housing subdivision on Flora Place. This mand has not been touched. In the past was important because it was “a symbol this ‘lower third’ has occupied over- of public acceptance of the principle of crowded tenements or the run-down and subsidized low rental housing”. But these derelict housing abandoned by the mid- 100 units did not come close to meeting dle income group”. the demand. As a result, the City could not respond to the many health violations That year, 1949, changes were made to the committed by landlords—there was no National Housing Act authorizing the fed- place to put tenants who would have to eral government to put up 75 percent of be moved. Between 250 and 300 families the cost of low-rental housing projects if a were living in the old CPR and CNR im- provincial government put up the remain- migration sheds, which were then being 25 percent. Now it was up to the City ing used as temporary housing (WT, and the Province to advance proposals for July 4, 1947). low-rental housing. The Tribune (Dec. 17, 1949) reported: In 1949 William Courage, Superintendent of Emergency Housing, told Council that “There can be no question of the need. the City’s emergency housing was at its There are 3000 applications on file limit. Some consisted of “converted air from veterans seeking wartime houses force huts”, and “the situation is so bad in Winnipeg and the applications are that the Welfare Committee is consider- still coming in at the rate of 70 a ing placing in hotels certain families now month. On the average, 300 families a living in garages and slum conditions”. month apply for emergency accom- The “lack of low-rental housing in Winni- modation while placements average peg has forced people to live in houses only about 30.” condemned as unsanitary by the Health With demand for low-rental housing still Department”. A Tribune editorial said: so high, and the possibility of federal “Housing has... now become one of soci- funding now available, Jacob Penner ety’s most urgent problems” (WT, Feb. 12, moved that the City enter into negotia- 1949). Yet Councillor Jacob Penner’s 1949 tions with the province to enable the pro- motion to create a housing authority— vision of 1000 units of such housing. The modelled on that formed to administer motion was defeated by way of a referral Toronto’s new Regent Park public hous- to committee. The Tribune commented ing development—to negotiate with the that “many similar motions have been federal and provincial governments for defeated or referred to housing commit- the provision of low-rental housing, was tee before”, while Penner said to Council, defeated, even while more than 1000 peo- in exasperation: “Refer, defer, that’s all you ple still lived in emergency shelters (WT, do” (WT, Sept. 5, 1950). Sept. 20, 1949). In May of 1952 the Winnipeg Chamber of While investing heavily in support of Commerce came out in opposition to a suburbanization, governments under-in- plan to build 800 low-cost houses for vested in low-rental housing in the North rental purposes in Winnipeg. As the Trib-

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 13 une reported: “the Chamber was opposed properties do not return nearly as much to providing subsidized housing for one in taxes as the value of the services they group of citizens at the expense of others”. receive” (WT, June 22, 1957). The same Winnipegers seem to have agreed. When case was being made in Toronto: “Time in October, 1953, Winnipeg residents after time, proponents of slum clearance were called upon to vote on a $1.1 mil- pointed to the disproportionate rates of lion bylaw to build low-cost housing, the disease, social service costs, fires and proposal went down to defeat by a two crime in run-down neighbourhoods”. to one margin. (Brushett, 2001, p. 122; see also p. 247). Some people in Winnipeg began slowly Attitudes toward subsidizing low-rental to see that an investment in adequate housing began slowly to change when it low-rental housing was a productive in- increasingly became apparent that allow- vestment that would improve the City’s ing the persistence of poverty and inad- fiscal situation. equate housing created a net cost to government coffers. In 1957, the Tribune ran A 1959 report by the City Welfare Depart- a table based on a 1944 report, comparing ment revealed that payments to those on costs in District 1 and District 2 of what welfare were flowing straight through to they called ‘the slum area’ (in the North a small number of slum landlords who End), with costs in the city as a whole. The were racking up large profits, while re- figures are per 1000 of population, and peatedly incurring housing violations. The although drawn from a 1944 report, the report showed what the four landlords— Tribune argued that more recent partial called A, B, C and D—paid in taxes, and surveys had produced similar results. earned in rent, and the numbers of buildings they rented (Table Two). As Table One shows, various health, police and social service costs were much These four landlords took in rent 10 times higher in North End neighbourhoods than the annual taxes paid on their many prop- in the city as a whole. Further, the low- erties. In 1958 they incurred 388 violations income neighbourhoods, because of the of the Health Act. From 1955 to 1958 they deteriorated condition of their housing had a total of 1497 such violations, includ- stock, generated lower property tax rev- ing: 117 for defective walls, floors and ceil- enues. This was the case elsewhere. In ings; 86 for bed bugs; 66 for insufficient June, 1957, Montreal’s Director of Plan- plumbing; 54 for cockroaches; 38 for in- ning was quoted as saying that “slum sufficient heat; and 10 for rats.

Table One: Costs of Delivering Services in Winnipeg and in Selected North End Winnipeg Areas District 1 District 2 Rest of City Pop’n 29,479 Pop’n 23,246 Pop’n 170,292 Municipal hospital costs $825 $1608 $593 Admission to public wards 91.1 101.4 52.9 Arrests by police 21.1 52.2 6.5 Infant mortality 85.5 52 42.5 Deaths from TB. 4.6 7.9 2.9 Social welfare cases 16.1 19.3 6.7 Source: Winnipeg Tribune, Jan. 5, 1957.

14 North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development The City was subsidizing slum land- “Since 1944, the federal government has lords—the housing component of welfare proclaimed its willingness to put payments was going directly into slum money into slum clearance. Since 1954, landlords’ pockets, and little of that money Ottawa has stood ready to pay 75 % of was being reinvested in the provision of the cost of low-rental housing projects, adequate, affordable housing . These rev- including annual subsidy needed. But elations added to the growing pressure for Winnipeg has been unable to claim a what the Tribune called “alternative low- penny of this money because we have rental housing” (WT, Oct. 14, 1959). done nothing about the slums except talk about them and draw up reports Yet as the Tribune described it, progress and resolutions” (WT, June, 1961). was slow because the majority on Coun- cil were ideologically bound to oppose the The Tribune editorialized: subsidizing of housing for those of low in- “Children have been born and have comes, even while heavily subsidizing grown to adulthood, their lives suburban sprawl (WT, Dec. 29, 1959). marked by the impact of the slums, Councillor Edith Tennant charged that while Winnipeg City Council has been Winnipeg was “10 years behind the talking about slum clearance.... We’ve times”, adding that: “It is shocking to see been talking about it for a generation the progress in other cities and then to but we haven’t cleared any slums. If realize that Winnipeg has nothing off the the social and economic cost was drawing board so far” (WT, June 22, 1960). reckoned to be enormous 24 years ago, A Tribune editorial of October 12, 1960, was what must it be now?” stronger still: This represented a massive failure on the “Winnipeg’s record on urban renewal part of the City and the Province to invest and the provision of housing for low- in the North End in the wake of the post- income families borders on the dis- war flight of people and capital to the sub- graceful. For years there have been urbs. When we ask, today, how did the plans upon plans, and talk on talk. But inner city come to be in the condition that nothing has happened. Nothing has it is in, here is a major part of the answer: been accomplished”. a City Council totally committed over a In April, 1961, the Tribune pointed out that long period of time to promoting “nearly 9000 public housing units have suburbanization, with all the public sub- been built in 45 cities and towns across sidies that this involved, but resolutely Canada while Winnipeg was making up unwilling to invest in the hollowed-out its mind whether public housing is a good inner city left behind. So reticent was City idea” (WT, April, 1961). Council to invest in public housing that

Table Two: Taxes Paid and Rent Received by Four North End Winnipeg Slum Landlords, 1959 Taxes paid Rent received Ratio: rent to taxes Buildings A. $7442 $75,405 10 to 1 13 B. 3597 35,124 10 to 1 21 C. 7675 70,890 9 to 1 18 D. 2048 29,282 15 to 1 29 Source: Winnipeg Tribune, October 14, 1959.

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 15 Mayor Stephen Juba told the story of how was the generally accepted approach of he had been ‘bawled out’ once in Ottawa the time. That was what was being done for Winnipeg’s failure to get ‘slum clear- elsewhere, that was what would be im- ance’/public housing projects off the ported to Winnipeg. ground (WT, May 29, 1962). This long- The Salter-Jarvis neighbourhood com- time failure to invest has brought us to the prised the area from the CPR tracks north point that we are at today in Winnipeg’s to Selkirk Avenue, and from Main Street inner city and North End. west to Salter Street—what had been in the pre-Second World War era the heart d. Urban Renewal—At Last of the North End’s Jewish quarter, the Mitzraim. The portion of Salter-Jarvis be- Finally, in 1960, the City identified the tween the tracks and Dufferin Avenue had Salter-Jarvis area as the site of Winni- particularly deteriorated. Industrial firms peg’s first ‘urban renewal’ project, and and scrap yards had located along the rail- recommended the creation of the 168- way. Squeezed between the tracks to their unit Burrows-Keewatin public housing south and residential areas to their north, project in the city’s north-west corner, to they had no room to expand. They began house at least some of those to be dis- to purchase houses with a view to future placed from Salter-Jarvis. expansion. The result was that “a process A part of the reason for action finally be- of deterioration began” to set in. Jarvis Av- ing taken appears to have been a shift by enue was the worst. Manley Steiman, City the Chamber of Commerce, long-time of Winnipeg Health Inspector, “cites opponents of subsidizing low-income Jarvis Avenue itself as being, undoubtedly, housing. The Chamber now believed that the worst street in the entire city” (Yauk, it made financial sense to invest in low- 1973, pp. 45-46). Many houses on Jarvis rental housing. And pressure was grow- had been little more than shacks from the ing from the community more broadly. In beginning of the century; many lots, small 1961 representatives of 28 Winnipeg or- as they were, had two or more dwellings ganizations—including labour, social squeezed onto them. service, business, church and women’s After the Second World War the situa- organizations—were urging the govern- tion worsened. In the decade before ment to act on the creation of public hous- 1960, 75 percent of the Jewish families ing (WT, April, 1961). in this heart of the historic Jewish quar- The project of urban renewal that the ter left the neighbourhood, part of the City was finally prepared to move on flight to the suburbs. “In the wake of this was to take the form of ‘slum clearance’. migration, deterioration continued, ag- Urban renewal in the 1950s and 1960s gravated by increases in slum landlord- meant ‘slum’ clearance. ism” (Yauk, 1973, p. 47). That there was a massive housing prob- Early in the 1960s Aboriginal people be- lem in Winnipeg, and especially in the gan to move into the city. Many located North End, was undeniable. It could on Jarvis and in the surrounding area have been solved in a variety of ways. where housing was cheap. Strangers to But ‘slum clearance’—bringing in the the city, they were vulnerable to those bulldozers, knocking down existing who would profit from the weak, and houses, erecting blocks of new housing, particularly to slum landlords. “Houses and calling the process ‘urban renewal’— became hovels and landlords fed on the

16 North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development Writing in the March 12, 1961 edition of the Winnipeg Tribune, Val Werier described the Salter-Jarvis area as follows:

“When the CPR came through Winnipeg in 1881, it gave birth to a settlement north of the tracks. It was in effect a CPR village, consisting of clerks, brakemen, firemen, con- ductors, switchmen. Other residents included building trades workers, small shopkeepers, peddlers, teamsters, labourers. As immigrants from Europe began to settle there by the turn of the century, CPR workers moved to better districts. In a pattern of social status followed in other city areas, different racial groups displaced others. Today, some of the residents include the recent wave of Indians and Metis to the city. “The district has deteriorated partly because of its age. But from the start it was never destined to last....Anything went in the early days. There was no zoning or planning. Makeshift houses sprang up without foundations and some still exist today....It’s an area with an unusually large number of ‘½’ addresses. These addresses are on homes which share half a lot. They were built in front or behind.” ill-informed Indian and Metis people rived, non-Anglo Saxon inhabitants of who found accommodation in the area” Winnipeg’s North End were blamed for (Yauk, 1973, p. 47). the area’s poverty. The former heart of the Jewish North End—home to dilapidated Aboriginal people living on Jarvis and slum housing for 50 years and more by nearby took over from the pre-war Jew- this time—was now occupied by Aborigi- ish families as the new targets of racial nal people, who became the latest targets abuse. In August, 1962, the Tribune ran a of racial abuse. column that began: “The police, with pon- derous legal irony, call it Jarvis Boulevard. Typically, the report condemns an entire Others, with more bitterness, have named group, and makes no attempt to explain it Tomahawk Row” (WT, Aug. 25, 1962). the observed behaviour of some members In September the Tribune described a Win- of the group. No mention is made of the nipeg Police Commission report. racism that Aboriginal people faced upon arrival in Winnipeg. No mention is made “The Report, signed by Inspector Robert of the nefarious activities of avaricious Young, says the area has been a ‘prob- slum landlords. No mention is made of lem’ for many years. It adds it has the devastating impact of colonization become worse recently with the arrival upon Aboriginal people—that they were ‘of more persons of Indian racial stripped of their lands, that their economic origin. The district now appears to and political systems were destroyed, that have become an Indian and Metis they were pushed onto often distant re- community’, says Inspector Young’s serves, denied the right to practice their report. Some 27 single and multiple spirituality and their culture, forced into dwellings are completely occupied by residential schools, denied the right to persons of Indian origin.... The report speak their languages. Now, in the early says over 100 persons, mostly Indians, 1960s, some began to move into cities have been arrested in the area so far where they faced a modern industrial this year” (WT, Sept., 1962). culture for which many were simply not As had been the case throughout the prepared. They moved to where housing twentieth century, the most recently-ar- was available at the lowest cost, just as

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 17 Jews and Slavs had done earlier in the tion. The neighbourhood was bifurcated century. And as had been the case earlier by Dufferin Avenue. South of Dufferin to- in the century, the newcomers were sub- ward the tracks, and especially on Jarvis, ject to vile and vicious forms of racism. there was serious deterioration. And Winnipeg has a long and dishonourable Jarvis set the tone, in outsiders’ minds, for history of subjecting the inhabitants of the the neighbourhood. Yet while Jarvis was North End to racism. Councillor Joseph deteriorating, Dufferin Avenue itself con- Zuken responded angrily to the police re- tinued to thrive, with many small owner- port. As the Tribune (Sept., 1962) reported occupied stores still in business, while to it, Zuken said: “The police are throwing the north of Dufferin and west of King around racial tags. Indians get a raw housing remained in quite good condi- deal—there isn’t a people in the world tion, particularly in the area between Flora more exploited”. And “Jarvis Avenue and Selkirk Ave. The area south of should be declared a disaster area for hu- Dufferin was in bad shape, and needed man beings”. replacement; the area north of Dufferin was a healthy, albeit low-income neigh- Yet there were voices, even at this early bourhood—what one long-time resident, date, making the case for a genuine form Morry Zeilig, described as “a good area of Aboriginal community development. to be poor in” (Yauk, 1973, p. 46). Jean Legasse, Director of the Community Development Services branch of the pro- Yet what City of Winnipeg urban planners vincial Department of Welfare “believed saw when they looked at this part of the that Indian and Metis can organize suc- North End was only “slum”, “blight”, cessful community developments if they “deterioration and decay” (Yauk, 1973, p. are allowed to solve their own problems 52). Yauk argues that urban planners in their own way” (WT, Oct., 1962). Ur- looked at the North End from the outside, ban Aboriginal people have been doing with middle class values, and with no real that, quietly and effectively, for the past personal knowledge of the area nor its four decades, and the results have been people. Where North Enders saw ‘a good impressive (Silver, 2006, especially Chap- area to be poor in’, urban planners saw ter 5). Yet most in Winnipeg would re- only a ‘slum’. And in the era of urban remain oblivious to the many positive newal this meant bulldozing entire neigh- achievements of urban Aboriginal peo- bourhoods—the good along with the bad. ple in Winnipeg, just as they had re- The City’s response to the serious prob- mained largely oblivious to the remark- lems in the southern portion of the Salter- able social and cultural achievements of Jarvis area—the area around Jarvis Av- the Eastern European immigrants of enue itself—was to apply to the entire area, Winnipeg’s North End in the first half of including the healthy albeit low-income the century. Aboriginal people would part of the neighbourhood north of continue, throughout the second half of Dufferin, “a bulldozer operation lacking the twentieth century and beyond, to be both an insight and perception of the slum the victims of racist condemnations from problem itself” (Yauk, 1973, p. 2). Winnipeg’s dominant culture, just as In March, 1961, City Council approved their Eastern European predecessors in Winnipeg’s first ‘slum clearance’ program, the North End had been in the first half a four-stage, six-year plan to bulldoze of the twentieth century. most of Salter-Jarvis, construct 300-plus The Salter-Jarvis neighbourhood was public housing units, and add 168 units similarly the object of blanket condemna- in Burrows-Keewatin, in the city’s north- 18 North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development west corner, to be used to house some of proach to neighbourhood revitalization— those displaced by ‘urban renewal’. By one that included strong social supports, late October, 1963, people were moving not just bricks and mortar—would go into Burrows-Keewatin; by late summer completely unheeded. So too would simi- 1964, it was fully occupied. Construction lar pressure from within the community. of Lord Selkirk Park began in November, Rev. Charles Forsyth of St. Andrews Elgin 1966. Most of those eventually displaced United Church criticized City Council for from Salter-Jarvis did not move into Bur- focusing solely on the physical and not the rows-Keewatin—they moved into pri- social aspects of urban renewal. “There vately-owned housing in neighbourhoods are men (sic) on Council who haven’t had immediately north or east of Salter-Jarvis. a spark of social conscience for the last 20 years. All they’re worried about is how to From the outset, governments were told keep the mill rate down”. He added that that North End housing problems could racism was a part of the problem: not be solved simply by knocking down “Whether you admit it or not, there is a old houses and putting up new ones. The tremendous race problem in Winnipeg— problems were complex. Their solution it’s worse here than in Georgia” (WT, Feb. required a comprehensive approach with 8, 1963). Despite such warnings, little ef- a strong social component. In June, 1962, fort was put into the social side, the peo- both Albert Rose, a leader in the promo- ple side, of the public housing initiative. tion of public housing in Toronto and au- The implicit assumption appears to have thor of a book on Regent Park (Rose, 1959), been that the erection of new housing and Leonard Marsh, a pioneer in the units would, by itself, solve the problems building of Canada’s social security sys- associated with ‘slums’. tem, were in Winnipeg and spoke to the proposed public housing project in Lord In May, 1963, the expropriation of prop- Selkirk Park. Rose said: erty in Salter-Jarvis began. Residents received no prior notice, and no assistance “There’s a tremendous social task of with relocation. Many found private hous- building the community in this area. ing nearby, in houses that themselves We’ve found that you can’t just pro- were soon to be cleared. With Burrows- vide physical accommodation and Keewatin full by late summer 1964, and then stop.... you can’t develop urban Lord Selkirk Park not to open until 1967, renewal and assume the people are most of those displaced from Salter-Jarvis going to settle in their new environ- after May, 1963, were on their own. Of the ment without giving them a tremen- 480 households moved in Stage One of the dous amount of assisted social adjust- four-stage relocation process, “420 were ment” (WT, June 7, 1962). relocated to existing dwellings, mostly in Marsh said much the same: the North End” (Yauk, 1973, p. 102). By the end of Stage Three of the process, “850 “When you rebuild you must rebuild dwelling units had been eliminated, with the neighbourhood and not just set up only 56 households having been accom- a housing project. It simply isn’t modated in public housing units” (Yauk, enough to get rid of wretched houses. 1973, p. 119). The result: most of those This mistake has been made again and moved in the name of urban renewal did again in Great Britain and to a certain not end up in public housing; and the al- extent, Toronto” (WT, June 7, 1962). ready desperately-short supply of low- This early call for a comprehensive ap- rental housing was further reduced.

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 19 This has repeatedly been the experience deteriorated. Most of these were unfit for both in Canada and the USA—urban re- habitation” (Yauk, 1973, p. 94). The qual- newal, and in later years other projects ity of housing into which relocatees aimed at ‘solving’ the problems of ‘slums’, moved was, on average, an improvement. led to significant reductions in the num- But overcrowding worsened, and half of bers of low-income housing units. In Bos- those relocated in Stage One of the move ton in the 1940s and 1950s, where urban experienced rent increases—for more renewal schemes were being undertaken, than one-quarter, the rent increase was “only between 2 and 12 percent of those 50 percent or more (Yauk, 1973, p. 100). who lost their homes were provided with Almost 60 percent of all households apartments in the housing project that moved within a one-mile radius, many displaced them, even though, BHA [Bos- to North Point Douglas, east of Main ton Housing Authority] records suggest, Street, and many others to the area be- between 50 and 80 percent of displaced tween Selkirk and Redwood, north of families submitted applications” (Vale, Salter-Jarvis. In many cases: 2002, p. 55). Hugh Garner, author of the “Their move was met with apprehen- Depression era novel, Cabbagetown, set in sion and coldness on the part of the the area that would be cleared in 1949 to communities to which they migrated. make way for Canada’s first public hous- Established residents were resentful of ing project, Regent Park, wrote that: the welfare recipients and were espe- “There is an embryo movement on foot cially discriminatory towards the to clear Cabbagetown of its slums Indian and Metis” (Yauk, 1973, p. 101). [and] the people who live there don’t In September, 1966, 30 residents of the like it; what is to become of them when Magnus-McGregor area appeared before the slums are cleared? They will have City Council to complain about the influx to move into other slums. And when of people from the Salter-Jarvis area. They the new houses are built, how can they called the new arrivals “undesirables”, move back into them? They have no saying that “the moral standards of the money. It will indeed be a miracle if new residents shouldn’t be tolerated any- they are taken back into the new where”, and the whole process had “just houses.... [people in Cabbagetown] shifted the slum from the Lord Selkirk think that this slum clearance scheme development to the Magnus Ave- is one to make the sight of the poor McGregor St. area” (Winnipeg Free Press, districts easier on the eyes of the Sept. 27, 1966). beholder. The new houses will cause the slum dwellers to move and scat- Many of the original inhabitants of Salter- ter” (Quoted in Brushett, 2001, p. 116). Jarvis simply moved from one low-income neighbourhood to another nearby: Yauk (1973, p. 83) saw the same thing hap- “It is evident that for a great many pening with the clearance of Salter-Jarvis: families, and single persons, Lord “the people as pawns are one by one Selkirk Park Urban Renewal meant swept away to make way for better things only a change in address. I say this in to come. Better for whom?” reflection upon the elderly single There is no doubt that much of Salter- persons who traded one dingy room Jarvis was in need of revitalization. “Al- for another, the tenant families who most half (48.5%) of all households removed to better, or worse, accommo- sided in premises which were severely dations at rents they could ill afford,

20 North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development those denied access to public housing (WT, Dec., 1963). The number of units of by virtue of welfare status or poor public housing created was not sufficient housekeeping, those who moved to meet the demand at the time, let alone down Jarvis Ave. to an adjacent slum future demand. and those alienated from the new What is more, those most in need of af- communities to which they were fordable housing were not accepted into moved” (Yauk,1973, p. 151) . the new public housing complexes. Pub- Most of those expropriated were not ad- lic housing authorities screened appli- equately compensated for their houses. cants, admitting only the ‘deserving poor’. They did not receive enough to purchase Heather Robertson (WT, Oct. 22, 1966) a similar house in a viable neighbourhood. described the process this way: They should have received replacement “Where do the leftover people go? value; instead they received market value. When a slum is torn down for urban Many in the neighbourhood were of Slavic renewal, only a handful of the ‘upper origin, and did not want to move at all, class poor’ get accepted into new low- because in Salter-Jarvis they could still rent housing [because of the screening get by in their own languages. All Jew- of applicants]. Hundreds of displaced ish shopkeepers in the area, for exam- families—the rejects and leftovers ple, spoke several Slavic languages from the new housing projects—get (Yauk, 1973, p. 164). another old, run-down house much like the one they left. Now they may In the end, some 740 households were be living on Logan Ave or Isabel St relocated from Salter-Jarvis, with only —a few blocks from Jarvis Ave—but 70—less than 10 percent—being accom- their problems traveled with them. modated in new public housing units in These are the new ‘Displaced Persons’ Burrows-Keewatin or Lord Selkirk Park. of our society”. Most of those who did get such units were happy with their new housing—rents In short, most of the low-income families were affordable, they were close to their in Jarvis-Salter did not move into new old neighbourhood, and it was new (Yauk, public housing units, and in fact the 1973, p. 135). But the supply of new low- number of low-rental housing units was rental public housing was not nearly suf- reduced by the entire process. This was ficient to meet the demand. Shortly after consistent with the experience elsewhere. Burrows-Keewatin was completed, with Herbert Gans, writing about the experi- its 168 units, the Chairman of the Hous- ence with urban renewal in the USA, said: ing Committee for the Community Plan- “Not only did it [urban renewal] ning Council pointed out that: “The City reduce the supply of cheap housing to condemns 160 houses a year—not suitable low-income people, but poor reloca- to live in. In effect we have only now com- tion methods and the virtual absence pleted a one year supply”. Even once Lord of relocation housing, forced them to Selkirk Park was up and running, with its move into other slums or to pay much proposed 345 units, making a total with more rent than before, thus multiply- Burrows-Keewatin of 510 new units, there ing their problems” (quoted in Yauk, was at the time “a critical need for 1113 1973, p. 164. See also Biles, 2000, units. This means that families are now p. 147 and 154). occupying this number of units which are so sub-standard as to be beyond repair” At the same time, the commercial opera-

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 21 tions that could be found on every cor- because the glare of civic attention is ner of Salter-Jarvis disappeared at about constantly focused on ‘the project’, as the time that Lord Selkirk Park was it is known to social workers in the erected. In 1963 there were 148 firms of area. Police seldom visit the develop- a wide variety of kinds—62 retail, 49 in- ment.... They spend less time in dustrial, 35 wholesaling food processing, Burrows-Keewatin than they do 2 warehouses—in Jarvis-Salter. More wealthy River Heights. Children play were closed by the end of the 1960s. By hookey less and do better in school 1973, 75 percent of businesses operating than they did on Jarvis Ave.... Delin- a decade earlier had closed (Yauk, 1973, quency and crime have decreased. pp. 159-164). Alcoholism is being controlled. Em- Nevertheless, most of those who initially ployment is high”. moved into Burrows-Keewatin or Lord Yet by the time that the Hellyer Task Force Selkirk Park appear to have been happy came to Winnipeg in 1968, Burrows- with their new housing. The public hous- Keewatin and Lord Selkirk Park were the ing complexes thrived. targets of fierce criticism. Hellyer, then the There is evidence that the new develop- federal Minister in charge of housing, in ments of Burrows-Keewatin and Lord his hugely influential study of housing in Selkirk Park were deeply appreciated by Canada, claimed that large public hous- those lucky enough to find accommoda- ing projects created social and psychologi- tions there. Heather Robertson observed cal problems, and described them as (WT, Oct. 15, 1966) that: “ghettos of the poor” (Hellyer, 1969). “Social and emotional problems have How did public housing projects like Lord not disappeared from Burrows- Selkirk Park become ‘ghettos of the poor’? Keewatin. But they are no more severe To find the answers to this question, it is than in any other community in Win- useful to consider the US and Canadian nipeg—they are just more obvious experience with public housing.

22 North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development Part Two: The US Experience With Public Housing a. The Origins of Public Throughout the 1950s, 1960s and early Housing in the USA 1970s, tens of thousands of new public housing units were constructed annually Although some public housing had been in American cities (Bratt, 1989, p. 57). built earlier in the Depression for job crea- From the beginning, US public housing tion reasons, it was the 1937 Housing Act developments had a distinctive appear- which created the United States Housing ance. Intentionally designed to be differ- Authority, and “put public housing on a ent from surrounding low-income, inner permanent footing” (Hoffman, 1996, p. city ‘slum’ housing, they typically took the 425). The 1937 Housing Act formally form of apartments in large complexes. linked public housing to slum clearance, These design features, “originally in- as did the Housing Act of 1949. Thus be- tended to distinguish the projects in a gan the era of ‘urban renewal’, and the positive way, would in time become a confinement of most public housing to stigma for public housing” (Hoffman, inner cities, since the connection of pub- 1996, p. 430). Many took the form of high lic housing to slum clearance—what came rise projects, especially those in New York, to be called ‘urban renewal’—“virtually Chicago, Philadelphia and St Louis. Influ- assured that low-income housing would enced by Swiss modernist architect Le be built in distressed, often undesirable, Corbusier, whose vision was of soaring urban locations” where slums were lo- towers located in the midst of vast ex- cated (Turbov and Piper, 2005, p. 5). This panses of park-like grass (Hall, 1988, esp. in turn “meant that private developers Ch. 7), public housing in these cities came would not face significant competition for to be synonymous with row upon row of land on the desirable suburban fringes of high rise blocks. In St. Louis the most fa- American cities” (Radford, 2000, p. 111). mous, or infamous, was the Pruitt-Igoe The link between the building of low-in- project, which consisted of 33 eleven-story come public housing, and ‘slum clear- buildings. Even more vast was the world’s ance’, has its origins in the widespread largest public housing project, the Robert 19th century belief that urban slums cre- Taylor Homes in Chicago, “a two mile ated a malevolent environment that ad- stretch of twenty-eight 16-story buildings versely affected peoples’ lives, and that containing over 4300 units”, completed in the removal of slums could, in itself, cure 1963 (Hoffman, 1996, p. 433). social ills. Slums were seen to be “the These vast, high-rise, concrete projects nexus of all civil evil”. This was “a theory located in American inner cities would of environmentalism that traced epidem- become home to the poorest of the poor, ics, crime, alcoholism, vice, hooliganism, and political revolution to squalid hous- and to disproportionate numbers of Afri- ing” (Bauman, 2000, p. 7. See also Sewell, can-Americans. Taylor Homes originally 1993, p. 12). Knock down ‘slums’ and housed some 27,000 people, “of whom build new housing and these problems approximately 20,000 were children, all would automatically be solved, it was be- were poor, and almost all were Black” lieved. This thinking would lead to vast (Biles, 2000, p. 149). By 1998, of the 11,000 programs of slum removal—which came tenants in Robert Taylor Homes, 99 per- to be called ‘urban renewal’—and their cent were Black, 96 percent were unem- replacement with public housing. ployed, 84 percent earned less than

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 23 $10,000 annually, and 70 percent were “to maintain pre-existing patterns of under the age of 21 (Biles, 2000, p. 265). racial segregation, large public housing In Chicago, of the 51 public housing projects were constructed in or on the projects approved between 1955 and 1966, edge of existing urban ghettos. Ghetto 49 were in Black-dominated inner city boundaries were made visible by neighbourhoods. Of the 54 public hous- highways or other spatial barriers and ing projects operated by the Chicago the design of public housing set it Housing Authority (CHA) in 1968, 91 per- apart from the urban fabric, making it cent were located “in areas which are or easy to identify public housing resi- soon will be substantially all Negro” dents and keep them within the well- (Biles, 2000, p. 150). defined borders of ‘the projects’”.

Many have argued that public housing In short, large public housing projects in became a means of confining African- the USA came to be inextricably bound to Americans to inner cities, while Whites inner cities, to poverty, and to the raciali- fled to the suburbs, thus “preserving ra- zation of poverty. cial ghettos” and spatial segregation (Biles, 2000, p. 150; Hirsch, 1983). At- b. The Early Promise of tempts to build public housing in the sub- Public Housing urbs met with aggressive opposition (Biles, 2000, p. 151). In 1946 and 1947 at- The evidence is that at first, tenants in US tempts to build public housing for Afri- public housing projects were happy with can-American veterans in White subur- their new accommodations, and consid- ban Chicago neighbourhoods triggered “a ered the projects good places to live. In a violent white backlash.... At Airport study based on interviews with 79 peo- Homes near Midway Airport, whites ple who lived or worked in Chicago overturned cars and hurled rocks at the Housing Authority (CHA) projects in the apartments occupied by black veterans. 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, Fuerst (2003, p. In 1947, the move-in of black veterans to 2) shows that CHA projects: Fernwood Homes on the Southwest Side “helped thousands of Chicagoans generated even greater levels of white vio- escape slum housing conditions and lence”. Local governments supported enter a world that offered first-rate White segregationists. For example: housing, a close-knit community, and “In 1948 and again in 1950, the City the positive pride that comes from a Council blocked nearly all the CHA’s shared experience. In short, public [Chicago Housing Authority’s] rehousing and the CHA once worked— quested sites in white areas and spectacularly well”. forced the CHA to build nearly all its An African-American man who lived in housing in black neighbourhoods. the later infamous Cabrini Homes in Chi- This pattern was repeated in the late cago until 1953 said: “I think I had a 1950s under Mayor Richard J. Daley’s childhood second to none. I remember rule. As a result, nearly all postwar those years as golden years, frankly. I public housing in Chicago was built in cherish having grown up in Cabrini” African-American neighbourhoods” (Fuerst, 2003, p. 133). A man who lived (Fuerst, 2003, p. 5). in the Ida B. Wells Homes between 1941 It is difficult not to see this as a deliberate and 1950 said: strategy. As Crump (2003, p. 181) argues: “We were poor, but we didn’t know we

24 North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development were poor, because we lived in this Public housing in large American cities little development. We had new worked well at first. It housed the work- facilities. Central heat. The apart- ing poor, and created a positive sense of ments were new and clean.... We community. By the mid-1960s, however, wanted for practically nothing” this was no longer the case. Large public (quoted in Fuerst, 2003, p. 52). housing projects came to be identified with racialized poverty and violence. A woman who moved into Chicago’s Biles (2000, p. 152) says: “To many Harold Ickes Homes at the age of eleven Americans ... public housing had meta- said: morphosed into a dumping ground for “You would not believe how the Ickes society’s unfortunates and an absolute Homes looked when we first moved in last resort for anyone who could not pos- there. Gorgeous! They had green sibly do better elsewhere”. What caused grass, they had flowers.... There were this transformation? swings for the kids, there was a play- ground.... And there were no—as far c. The Deterioration of American as I know—there were no drugs at that Public Housing time, and there was no fighting. You could walk up and down at night, From the beginning, powerful forces op- nobody would bother you. Oh, but go posed the idea of good quality public hous- down there now and look, ooooh!” ing. As early as 1936 a US Senator com- (Fuerst, 2003, p. 89; see also Feldman plained in Congress that “the houses that and Stall, 2004, pp. 72-78). have been constructed in New York, Cleveland and Boston and elsewhere are The same was the case in other US cities. really in competition with private prop- Vale (2002, p. 20 and p. 12), for example, erty” (Radford, 2000, p. 105). Private de- writes that: “In Boston, as in many other velopers, Chambers of Commerce and American cities... those who gained new politicians opposed the development of apartments were delighted”. One Boston public housing; it provided competition to public housing project in 1940 “boasted private developers, and cut into profits twelve softball teams, an eight-team bowl- (Bratt, 1989, p. 56). This is at least a part ing league, two Girl Scout and three Boy of the reason that most large public hous- Scout troops, a newspaper, a credit union, ing projects are located in inner cities, take and a symphony orchestra—as well as the form of high-rise towers to save on numerous other clubs and societies that property costs, and were poorly built, also provided financial assistance, health care, to save on costs. and even programs for children living outside the project”. As the US economy weakened in the 1970s, and the global economy restruc- Radford (2000, p. 105), referring to the tured in various important ways, and public housing built in the 1930s by the governments responded with severe cut- Public Works Administration, said: backs in public spending, public housing “Popular acceptance, not just critical further suffered. This is an important success, greeted the agency’s work. part of the explanation for the deteriora- Ordinary citizens expressed their tion of public housing. approval by moving into the federal While the general public—and many in developments—even when they might government, media and academe—came have afforded other accommodations”. to see public housing as both symbol and

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 25 cause of urban problems, the more ac- changed, from two-parent working class curate interpretation is that public hous- families to larger numbers of social assisting came to be a receptacle, or ‘ware- ance recipients and lone-parent families. house’, for those most badly damaged This happened for several reasons. Fuerst by the broader changes in the political (2003, p. 3) argues that in the early years, economy of urban America. The prob- public housing in Chicago was well-man- lem is not public housing, as such. The aged and adequately-funded, and pro- problem is much broader. But public spective tenants were screened so that housing has been asked to deal with the those living in public housing were mostly worst effects of the problem, and in do- two-parent working families. And “in its ing so has come to be identified with, first twenty years the CHA fostered an and even mistakenly seen as a cause of, environment that created a strong sense the problem. Public housing has taken of community—these projects were true the fall for—been blamed for—problems ‘villages’ raising children”. However, that it did not cause, but whose victims since the 1970s: it was asked to house. And it was asked “Public housing in too many big cities is to do so in rapidly deteriorating inner operated as the warehouse for families city environments, and with steadily who have serious social problems and declining resources. who need drug treatment, health care, For most large public housing projects, job training, and basic educational building was done on the cheap. Public skills. But the program was not de- housing was specifically intended not to signed to deal with this overwhelming compete with private developers, and was level of need.... they converted the deliberately designed to be of lower qual- public housing into a modern day ity than private housing (Quercia and poorhouse by making the CHA the Galster, 1997, p. 536 and 540; Bratt, 1989, provider of the city’s housing of last p. 56). Turbov and Piper (2005, p. 5) ar- resort” (Fuerst, 2003, p. 195 and 199). gue that “public housing began to be con- Vale (2002, p. 6) advances the same ar- structed as high-rise developments to save gument: on land costs”, and “were built cheaply and to minimum housing standards” (see “A half-century before, public housing also Popkin et al, 2004, p. 16). Soviet hous- had valiantly serviced the working ing officials visiting Chicago’s Henry poor, but now it struggled to house Horner Homes in 1955, during construc- America’s most desperate urban tion, expressed surprise at the use of poor- residents. As the 1990s ended, only quality building materials, and said they about one in five public housing would be fired if they constructed build- households reported earned wages as ings that way at home. In an editorial its primary source of income, and the next day, The Chicago Daily News more than three-quarters of house- said: “there is little use for luxury in holds were headed by a single female. building subsidized low-cost housing” Moreover, since the majority of public (Kotlowitz, 1991, p. 22) . The effects housing residents were Black or would be felt in later decades as public Latino, the program as a whole faced housing projects, which came to be increased political marginality”. home to the poorest of the poor, physi- By the mid-1960s, “pressures from civil cally deteriorated beneath their feet. rights groups” (Vale, 2002, p. 17) led to The demographics of public housing also the end of the tough screening policies

26 North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development that had characterized the earlier period. from public housing many upwardly- The poorest of the poor, whose need for mobile working class tenants. “Access to good quality, low-rental housing was least public housing was thereby restricted to likely to be met by the private for-profit the most economically disadvantaged housing market, began—probably with segments of the population” (Venkatesh, the best of intentions—to be admitted in 2000, p. x). Public housing became a ware- ever-larger numbers, so that public hous- house for those most adversely affected ing increasingly became ‘housing of last by a rapidly changing urban political resort’. This was made more the case by economy. Today, public housing serves a the effects of suburbanization, as a result tenant base that is very poor: “The aver- of which the ‘pool’ of applicants for pub- age public housing tenant has an annual lic housing changed, because most pub- income of $6000” (Querica and Galster, lic housing was located in inner cities from 1997, p. 541). This was not the case in the which White families and later African- 1960s, when public housing tenants rep- American families who could afford to do resented a spread of income categories so had fled. The poorest of the poor were (Querica and Galster, 1997, p. 566). left behind, confined to deteriorating in- Not only did these changes remove many ner cities. Venkatesh (2000, p. 276), in his working class families from public hous- analysis of Chicago’s Robert Taylor ing, replacing them increasingly with the Homes, observes that: non-employed poor, but also they reduced “In its first three years, Robert Taylor the amount of rent revenue available for was a success by any definition, in repairs and maintenance. The result was large part because the CHA and a downward spiral of deterioration: tenants had the freedom and resources “Caught between rising costs and to meet household needs. The two falling rents, city officials began to cut parties screened applicants rigorously, maintenance and security budgets for mixed working and poor families in the deteriorating projects. Then the the high-rises, and drew on the re- Brooke Amendment to the 1968 Hous- sources of the wider community to ing Act placed a ceiling on rents of 25 support tenants and decrease their percent of the tenants’ income, further sense of isolation. By the mid-1960s, reducing the amount of funds avail- the deluge of impoverished house- able for operating expenses” holds that came to the Housing Au- (Hoffman, 1996, p. 436. See also thority seeking shelter made this Turbov and Piper, 2005, pp. 5-6). conscious planning and social engi- neering unworkable. Buildings soon During the 1960s and 1970s the Chicago became filled with households in Housing Authority: poverty, the CHA and organizations in “neglected basic maintenance, attribut- the complex were stretched beyond ing this neglect to lack of federal their capacities”. funds. Working class families with Adding to the problem was that families options fled in the early 1970s, trigger- whose incomes rose above a certain level ing a budget crisis that brought about a were required to leave public housing further deterioration of conditions. A projects. This was made particularly the highly predictable downward spiral case by amendments to the Housing Act ensued, and the CHA’s ineffective in 1969, 1970 and 1971 (Quercia and leadership made little effort to stem Galster, 1997, p. 538), which removed the bleeding. Public housing was

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 27 allowed—through poor leadership and projects as human disaster areas” neglect—to become the city’s housing (Hoffman, 1996, p. 436, referring to Rain- of last resort” (Fuerst, 2003, p. 6). water, 1970). Pruitt-Igoe was torn down— dynamited—in the early 1970s, deter- Most large public housing projects were mined by civic authorities in St Louis to located in inner city neighbourhoods be beyond redemption. In 1973 President which were suffering the effects of post- Nixon declared a moratorium on the con- war suburbanization and de-industriali- struction of new public housing. zation. Inner cities were ‘hollowed out’; those left behind were disproportionately Pruitt-Igoe and its problems came to be the poor; few jobs were left. Those in the seen, in the dominant view, as evidence worst circumstances—and particularly of all that is wrong with public hous- women with children—were directed to ing. Yet the problem at Pruitt-Igoe was public housing, which thus became ‘hous- not public housing. It was the concen- ing of last resort’, the new, late 20th centration of racialized poverty, as the re- tury poorhouses. Querica and Galster sult of the dramatic restructuring of the (1997, p. 538) refer to the “dramatic spa- political economy of urban America. As tial transformation of America’s urban one critic of the dominant view points landscape during the last four decades”, out, in an attempt to bring light to the which “left many public housing tenants ‘Pruitt-Igoe myth’: in inner city areas with few opportunities “ What issues are not discussed in for socioeconomic advancement. Moreo- this myth are issues of race—the ver, public housing developments found over 10,000 residents of Pruitt-Igoe themselves in neighbourhoods with ever were 98% African-American—and greater concentrations of poverty and the issues of poverty.... with an annual attendant social consequences”. median family income of $2,454 and High proportions of those left in the ‘hol- a family including, on average, a lowed out’ inner cities were, and are, Af- mother and 4.28 children” (Birming- rican-Americans. They, in particular, ham, 1998, p. 1). have been adversely affected by these From the beginning, in 1951, “whites broader socio-economic changes. Public could not be convinced to move into the housing served to confine them, in their project”. As a result, “Moneys for the poverty, to the inner city, enabling the project began to dry up immediately.... maintenance of late 20th century urban, as the population was increased, money de facto segregation: for landscaping and any services (pub- “The loss of manufacturing jobs devas- lic spaces like gyms, playgrounds, a pro- tated African-American communities posed grocery, even public bathrooms) and as social problems associated with disappeared” (Birmingham, 1998, p. 3). joblessness spread, the spatial isolation By the early 1970s, “the only tenants of large public housing projects... acted who stayed were those with nowhere as a spatial containment policy” else to go, most often single mothers (Crump, 2003, p. 181. See also with more than four children” (Birming- Venkatesh, 2000, p.x; Popkin et al, ham, 1998, p. 8). 2004, p. 8; Fosburg et al, 1996 ). The open, park-like spaces in which the As the deterioration set in, criticism of soaring, Le Corbusier-inspired towers of public housing mounted. One book “con- the largest public housing projects were demned Pruitt-Igoe and other giant set increasingly became home to vandal-

28 North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development ism and crime. By the 1980s, the large often in public spaces where tenants high-rise public housing projects were and their children were present” dominated by gangs and drugs and vio- (Venkatesh, 2000, p. 111. See also lence (see Popkin et al, 2004, Ch. 2; Kotlowitz, 1991, p. 38). Vankatesh, 2000, esp. Ch. 3). Kotlowitz This rise in drug-related gang violence (1991, pp. x-xi), in his vivid description of coincided with the severe economic reces- the lives of two young African-American sion of the early 1980s. “People was boys in Chicago’s Henry Horner Homes messed up, wasn’t no work”, said one in the mid-1980s, writes: man. Another, speaking in 1980, added: “I was unnerved by the relentless “Things are different now, things are tense neighbourhood violence he [Lafayette, now. The young people have nothing to the older of the two boys, then 10 years do. No jobs. No recreation. So they are of age] talked about. In fact, I had rowdy. They don’t go to school. They trouble believing it all. And then I make trouble” (Venkatesh, 2000, p. 119). asked Lafeyette what he wanted to be. Manufacturing jobs were largely gone ‘If I grow up, I’d like to be a bus from American inner cities, and in many driver’, he told me. If, not when. At the cases from the USA generally (Bluestone age of ten, Layeyette wasn’t sure he’d and Harrison, 1982). Governments, espe- make it to adulthood”. cially starting with Reagan in 1980, were cutting public funding dramatically—the The book’s title, There Are No Children Here, Reagan administration cut funding to arises from the comment made by the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) boys’ mother to the author: “But you by 76 percent from 1980 to 1988—and re- know, there are no children here. They’ve sponding to the inevitable rise in social seen too much to be children”. Kotlowitz problems with increased state repression. (1991, p. 32) describes the level of violence Public housing, and those who lived in in the summer of 1987: “By season’s end, public housing, were badly hurt. the police would record that one person every three days had been beaten, shot at, “In the waning years of President or stabbed at Horner. In just one week, Nixon’s administration.... federal they confiscated twenty-two guns and 330 funding for mediating institutions in grams of cocaine. Most of the violence the ghetto, ranging from job training here that summer was related to drugs”. centres to social work programs, Venkatesh, describing the gang domina- withered and there was little buffer tion of Chicago’s Robert Taylor Homes, between law enforcement agencies quotes a tenant saying: “It used to be our and the citizenry. By the dawn of the community, but it’s theirs now. [The Reagan administration, funding gangs] have taken over”. Another tenant priorities for policing in inner cities added: “Gangs have always been part of shifted almost wholly to the use of law the community, they always will be. It’s enforcement techniques such as mass just that now, they control us” (Venkatesh, arrest, infiltration and covert surveil- 2000, p. 3). The rise of crack cocaine added lance, and surprise interdiction that to the problem: disrupted public space, rather than policing it in a manner that promoted “The potential revenue from crack its usability” (Venkatesh, 2000, p. 119). economies escalated conflicts between gangs, and increasingly weapons The political Right, opposed from the out- were used during these disputes, set to the idea of good quality public hous-

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 29 ing, seized upon these problems with a system”, the lucrative drug trade created renewed determination to eliminate pub- the real opportunities, the alternative op- lic housing. Crump (2003) argues that the portunity structure (Venkatesh, 2000, pp. Right waged: 149 and 162). Black youth did not feel welcome in ‘good’ jobs, and the stigma “a relentless campaign of individual attached to large US public housing and territorial stigmatization designed projects—the design of the projects, and to undermine political support for the especially the high-rise projects, set them [public housing] program.... Widely apart as “stigmatized warehouses of the disseminated media images of wel- poor” (Hirsch, 1983, as quoted in fare mothers living in decayed public Hoffman, 1996, p. 436)—further contrib- housing projects were used to de- uted to the isolation by race and class, to velop a linkage between the morally their spatial and social confinement to loaded concept of welfare depend- the ‘projects’. ency and the material landscape of public housing. These campaigns “No place in the United States, with the helped to convince the public that possible exception of prisons and the only solution to inner city decay certain hospitals, stigmatizes people in and disorder is the demolition of as many debilitating ways as a dis- public housing”. tressed inner city public housing project.... these stigmatized individuals The oppressive policy of pushing ever have accumulated in environments more Black youth into penal institutions that themselves only added to the contributed to the problems: stigma” (Vale, 2002, p. 13) . “It was an outgrowth in the 1970s of Venkatesh (2000, pp. 164-169) describes the increasingly large population of how African-American youth in Chicago’s incarcerated Black youths. Prison Robert Taylor Homes were affected by officials, using gangs to help maintain their identification with the ‘projects’: social control, effectively enabled “Their social standing as black Americans gangs and their leaders to organize— who live in the ‘projects’ and in the ‘ghetto’ often members joined simply for affects their expectations of success”. protection against indiscriminate They do not expect to ‘succeed’ in conven- physical harassment—and to consoli- tional terms. Kotlowitz (2005, p. 121) de- date, form alliances, and grow in scribes a young man in Chicago’s Horner number and strength. In the late Homes, who “had thought about the fu- 1970s and early 1980s, members ture, something most young men in this returned to ghetto streets and found neighbourhood rejected—often for good few legitimate work opportunities but reason—as a waste of time”. increasing opportunities to sell heroin, cocaine, and marijuana, and to join And so, given the absence of opportuni- car-theft rings and extortion rackets” ties in the mainstream economy, and (Venkatesh, 2000, p. 133. See also given the belief that any such opportuni- Kotlowitz, 1991, p. 36). ties, even if they were to exist, are beyond their project-bounded reach, many young In this environment, where there were men join the gangs: few legitimate opportunities to live out “the American dream”, and young Afri- “Gang activity affords them space to ‘be can Americans were abandoning “an ir- a man’. It is a life that is not far afield relevant and poorly funded educational of the classic rags-to-riches American 30 North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development success stories, particularly the ideal- Le Corbusier-inspired public housing ized organized crime narratives in projects that have become ‘housing of last which immigrants rise above their resort’ and home to drug-driven gang vio- slums but remain closely wed to lence that are associated in the public im- people living there. Like ethnic immi- agination with the failure of public hous- grants, the leaders want to leave ing. And even in their case, the cause is poverty behind and gain independ- not public housing as such. Fuerst (2003, ence, and their experiences as job p. 209), for example, makes a strong case, seekers—and as observers of other based on the early experience with public aspiring ghetto dwellers—have not housing in the US, that with good man- provided evidence that the legitimate agement, adequate funding and reason- labor force will support their dreams. able screening, “public housing for low- Their frustration and their preference income, female-headed families can be for remaining among their peers lead sanctuaries, not penitentiaries”. them to withdraw to the ghetto and to the drug trade” (Venkatesh, d. HOPE VI 2000, p. 173). The severity of the problems associated The result is large, inner city, public hous- with public housing led, in 1989, to the ing projects that are home to extreme con- creation by Congress of the National Com- centrations of racialized poverty, and that mission on Severely Distressed Public are the breeding grounds for gangs, drugs Housing. The Commission produced a and violence. The problem is not public National Action Plan calling for a 10 year housing. The problem is the broader strategy “to eliminate severely distressed forces of a rapidly changing urban politi- public housing by 2000” (Turbov and cal economy, which have left many inner Piper, 2005, p. 7). In response, Congress city residents behind, and then ware- created HOPE VI. housed them in the public housing long since built there. HOPE VI—Home Ownership for People Everywhere—was launched in 1993. It That the problem is not public housing as has been described as “a dramatic turna- such is made evident by the fact that not round in public housing policy and one all public housing in the USA has been a of the most ambitious urban redevelop- disaster. Public housing for seniors has ment efforts in the nation’s history” continued to provide much needed, good (Popkin et al, 2004, p. 1). The program is quality affordable housing. “Moreover, premised on the belief that the high con- many thousands were and are content to centration of poverty and unemployment live in the inexpensive apartments that “was a major contributor to the high lev- public housing projects offered, as long as els of social problems in distressed public some semblance of personal security was housing”. The solution is to deconcentrate included in the bargain” (Hoffman, 1996, poverty by knocking down parts of large p. 436). As Naperstek (2000, p. 3) notes: public housing projects, replacing them “The great majority of these [public hous- with mixed-income housing sold or ing] projects are neither large nor dis- rented at market rates, and providing tressed. In accordance with HUD man- vouchers to those low-income tenants dis- dates, most provide decent, safe, and sani- placed in the process, enabling them to tary housing”. relocate to better neighbourhoods. The It is the high-rise, inner city-located and result has been “a massive demolition and

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 31 reconstruction effort” (Querica and and workforce participation rates have Galster, 1997, p. 549). The hope is to cre- improved. Crime levels have dropped ate new, healthy, mixed-income neigh- dramatically, as much as 93 percent in bourhoods that no longer look like, nor Atlanta’s Centennial Place. Where have the stigma now attached to, large revitalization efforts focused on school high-rise public housing projects. quality, student test scores dramatically improved. Finally, these Much of the discourse around HOPE VI redevelopments were able to attract is about improving physical design—a and retain residents with a broad move from high-rise towers to a more gar- range of income levels while still den apartment/townhouse design. In this, serving public housing families. With HOPE VI embodies the ‘new urbanism’— market-rate renters and home-buyers a movement among city planners, archi- getting a foothold in these renewing tects and developers that rejects ‘modern’ neighbourhoods, property values and planning, and takes advantage of the posi- new investments have also soared in tive impacts yielded by traditional plan- these more viable, mixed-income ning designs. There is some evidence that communities” (Turbov and Piper, the strategy is producing successes. 2005, p. v). Turbov and Piper (2005, p. v), for example, start their recent analysis of HOPE VI Despite these impressive achievements, projects by saying that: there are reasonable and important criti- cisms of HOPE VI. To the extent that the “Across the United States, attractive program is based on the argument that mixed-income developments and the problem with public housing is a prob- revitalized neighbourhoods are being lem of design, it is flawed. The ‘failed created where distressed public hous- architecture’ argument (Hackworth 2005, ing once stood.... By leveraging other p. 44)—ie., that the problem with public public and private dollars, the HOPE housing is its design—obscures the deeper VI program has converted the nations’ problems associated with the changing worst public housing projects into the political economy of urban America, and foundations of healthy neighbour- the massive cuts to public funding. And hoods, providing quality affordable it enables a framing of HOPE VI as ‘pro- housing while attracting new market gressive’, despite its elimination of so activities and radically changing the many low-income rental units, and result- urban landscape”. ing displacement of the poorest of the poor Turbov and Piper (2005, p. v) add, based who were its tenants. For example, Henry on their analysis of HOPE VI projects in Cisneros, former HUD director and key Atlanta, Louisville, Pittsburgh and St. promoter of HOPE VI in the mid-1990s, Louis, that: frames HOPE VI in this positive light, arguing that gains are being made and that “Early evidence shows that there have they are attributable to design changes: been discernible market improvements in these formerly distressed neigh- “We are replacing the worst of the bourhoods, from the time of pre- housing units... that have, for too long, redevelopment to as late as 2004. been the settings for our children’s Household incomes in each of these urban nightmares... Instead of the case study projects grew at a faster super blocks of Cabrini-Green, grids of pace than that of their city or region, traditional streets are being designed. after redevelopment. Unemployment Instead of mammoth apartment 32 North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development buildings, small-scale townhouse-style “On the basis of HUD data, researchers housing is being constructed” (quoted estimate that 11,000 units of public in Hackworth, 2005, p. 45). housing are being demolished each year, most of these previously occu- But what is really happening is the mass demolition of public housing. Individual pied by residents earning less than 30 Public Housing Authorities are competi- percent of the area’s median income. tively awarded HOPE VI grants to revi- When replacing these apartments with talize large public housing projects, but are ‘mixed-income communities’, housing not required to replace all of the units authorities are mixing in only about eliminated as part of a redevelopment 4000 public housing units—and most plan. Most “do not replace anywhere close of these are targeted to households to 100 percent of the felled units. Only with higher incomes than those of slightly more than half of the units to be current housing residents”. built with HOPE VI dollars will be even The displacement process particularly tar- nominally ‘public’ (ie, affordable to the gets ‘troublemakers’, and does so in a existing tenantry), and only 50.7 percent harsh fashion, punishing entire families. of these units will actually be available to Hackworth (2005, p. 36), who sees HOPE the residents whose homes were origi- VI as a neo-liberal initiative, points, for nally demolished” (Hackworth, 2005, p. example, to the ‘one strike and you are out’ 35) . This smacks of the effects of ‘urban policy, which makes possible the eviction renewal’ in the 1950s and 1960s, which of those families any of whose members reduced the total number of low-income are convicted of a criminal offence. rental units available, and is consistent Crump (2003, p. 179) argues, like with what Yauk (1973) described when Hackworth, that HOPE VI is consistent the Salter-Jarvis area was cleared to make with recent welfare reform initiatives way for the building of the Lord Selkirk aimed at privatizing social service provi- Park housing development in Winnipeg. sion and moving people out of public There is, in short, a risk of repeating with housing and off of the welfare rolls. What HOPE VI, at least some of the problems follows is that the improved neighbour- created in an earlier era by urban renewal. hoods and reduced crime statistics cited Chicago, for example, “is in the middle by advocates of HOPE VI may simply re- of the largest housing demolition program flect yet another occurrence of the historic in history, with plans to tear down all fifty- pattern of ‘slum clearance’—by which the one of its high-rise public housing build- poorest of the poor are pushed from one ings. Numerous buildings at projects like low-income neighbourhood to another. the Robert Taylor Homes, Henry Horner Crump, (2003, p. 185) argues that “as the Homes, and Cabrini-Green have already widespread demolition of inner city pub- come down” (Fuerst, 2003, p. 205). Not lic housing projects proceeds throughout all the public housing units are being re- the United States, the built environment placed: “Although fifty thousand units of the inner city is being remade. Public have been authorized (to be torn down), housing is rapidly being replaced by new only thirteen thousand new units have urbanist townhouses, intended to re-en- been built in the program’s first six gineer the class and racial structure of the years—a drop in the bucket of what’s city by bringing middle class European- needed” (Fuerst, 2003, p. 193). Vale (2002, Americans back to the inner city”. This is p. 1) observes that: a form of gentrification.

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 33 Many public housing tenants believe that Those pushed out of public housing as a this is what is happening, and have op- result of the loss of units become the new posed HOPE VI as a result. There have urban refugees: been many localized struggles against “The question of what has happened to HOPE VI initiatives in US public housing the original residents of the revitalized complexes, much as there were many HOPE VI developments has become a struggles against urban renewal earlier in major—and contentious—focus of the century. In New York City, “the fear concern.... To date, approximately of displacement was sufficient to organ- 49,000 residents have been relocated ize tenants against the HOPE VI program from HOPE VI properties across the in the mid-1990s” (Hackworth, 2005, p. United States. Unfortunately, there is 38). At Chicago’s Cabrini-Green, the only limited information about how demolition of low-rental public units has these residents have fared, although led to opposition from existing tenants early analysis suggests that relatively fearful of losing their homes. few will return to the revitalized “Reducing the number of public hous- HOPE VI developments” (Popkin et al, ing units in order to make redeveloped 2004, pp. 21 and 27). sites ‘mixed-income’ is an issue in Chicago, where most of the plans call For many public housing tenants, HOPE for only one-third of the units to be VI “is another form of ‘urban renewal’ that public housing, with the rest either is displacing poor households from ‘affordable’ (80-120 percent of area gentrifying neighbourhoods” (Popkin et median income) or market-rate. At al, 2004, p. 28). At Cabrini-Green, for ex- Cabrini Green... residents fought in ample, the fact that the project lies in close court to ensure that those who wanted proximity to Chicago’s posh Gold Coast to stay could be included in the new district fuels the suspicion that the entire community that the city envisioned for process is about gentrification. them. They also fought to get more Advocates of HOPE VI argue that hous- control over the process to ensure that ing vouchers enable former public hous- replacement housing be built first and ing tenants to relocate to higher-income that demolition happen afterwards, neighbourhoods. However, there is evi- whenever possible. Their view... is that dence that policies aimed at moving peo- while the physical design is important ple out of low-income neighbourhoods to residents, having enough replace- into higher-income neighbourhoods have ment public housing is essential to the not worked as well as first thought. The success of housing plans. Otherwise, most well-known of such initiatives was this ‘new urbanism’ is just another the Gautreaux program, which originated form of displacement of poor people” in Chicago as a civil rights initiative. In (Smith, 2002, p. 1). 1969 the courts ruled in Gautreaux v. Chi- Popkin et al (2000) concur: “The demoli- cago Housing Authority that the CHA’s tention of public housing projects and their ant placement amounted, in effect, to seg- replacement by mixed income develop- regation, in that the tenants in large pub- ments is resulting in a significant reduc- lic housing projects were overwhelmingly tion in the amount of low income hous- African-American. The remedy was to ing available. For example in Chicago it is move public housing tenants to suburban estimated that there will be a net loss of neighbourhoods where it was thought over 14,000 units of affordable housing.” “that thriving suburban locales will im-

34 North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development part superior schooling and employment However, there may be, despite its flaws, to the poor who are moved there” some positive aspects to HOPE VI pro- (Hoffman, 1996, p. 440). The Clinton ad- grams. These are the product of those el- ministration expanded the program to ements of the program which go beyond Baltimore, Boston, Los Angeles and New bulldozing and redesigning to address York, as well as Chicago, in the form of people and community. Naperstek et al the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) pro- (2000, p. iii), for example, make the case gram. However, careful studies of the that HOPE VI is making a genuine differ- outcomes of Gautreaux and MTO found ence “because of the critical provision that those who moved gained little if any- written into the original HOPE VI legisla- thing relative to those who remained in tion to address people and opportunities inner city public housing (Hoffman, 1996, as well as bricks and mortar”. The key, p. 441). Many of those who have used they argue, is that HOPE VI partners are vouchers to move to the private market “working with an approach that we call are having trouble making their rent pay- community building”, an approach rooted ments (Popkin et al, 2004, p. 30). Middle in an asset-based philosophy, and com- class neighbourhoods have generally re- mitted to resident involvement and a ho- sisted such programs (Hogan, 1996). And listic approach to service provision serious questions about the methodology (Naperstek, 2000, pp. 1-2). Training and of earlier and more positive studies of the job placement are central features of this Gautreaux program have led Popkin et al approach. Naperstek et al (2000, p. 61) (2000, pp. 929-930) to conclude that: “it argue that: would be a mistake to view this research “Public housing communities can as conclusive evidence of the potential become effective training grounds and benefits of dispersal programs”. launching pads for underprivileged or The destruction and non-replacement of marginalized citizens who want to low-income rental units is a major prob- become self-sufficient and a catalyst lem, and represents the deep flaw of for the revitalization of the larger HOPE VI. It is reminiscent of the wide- neighbourhood”. spread displacement of ‘slum’ residents They describe an employment develop- during the ‘urban renewal’ programs of ment approach being used in Chicago the 1950s and 1960s. Those most in need public housing projects that links employ- of affordable rental housing will now have ers and tenants. “In the most effective even less such housing available to them. employment programs, housing authori- As Goertz (2003, p. 256) puts it: ties identify prospective employers and tie the training process to job commitments”. “A responsible antipoverty policy An example is the partnership between should not lead with demolition of low the Chicago Housing Authority and cost housing and the forced relocation Walgreens drug store chain. Walgreens of the poor. This nation’s history with has agreed “to install retail training the urban renewal program suggests centers in community facilities at two that without complementary actions to HOPE VI sites—the Cabrini Green reduce exclusionary barriers and Dantrell Davis Center and the Robert incentives that foster and facilitate Taylor Homes Boys and Girls Club”. growing socioeconomic disparities... Walgreens supplies actual equipment— the scattering of poor people, in itself, store counters, price scanners—to set up accomplishes little”. a virtual store and training site, and

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 35 Walgreens trains people in this on-site ing employers in the process from the facility, while they simultaneously get outset (Loewen, Silver et al, 2005). ‘soft skills’ training. Jobs are made avail- From this long history of the rise and de- able to graduates. “By August 1999 two cline of public housing in the USA, we dozen HOPE VI residents were em- can draw a strong, cautionary note, leav- ployed by the drug store chain, while ened by a glimmer of hope. The real another 12 completed the training” hope lies not in demolishing and rede- (Naperstek et al, 2000, p. 63). This is con- veloping, but in ‘reclaiming’ public sistent with the important work being housing by means of a strategy of com- done in many US cities to get low-in- munity development and gradual de- come people into good jobs by involv- stigmatization (Vale, 2002, p. 36).

36 North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development Part Three: The Canadian Experience With Public Housing a. The Origins of Public p. 3). This has been largely attributable to Housing in Canada government and business opposition to public housing in favour of the private, for- The pattern of public housing in profit provision of home ownership, the Canada—its construction, deterioration latter benefitting from the support of “a and current attempts at revitalization— well-financed lobby, sympathetic minis- parallels that in the USA, although on a ters and deputy ministers, and a majority smaller scale. The Canadian experience of Canada’s voters” (Hulchanski, 2003, p. can be discerned through a consideration 5). In 1946, C.D. Howe said in the House of the first, largest and perhaps most fa- of Commons that: “It is the policy [of this mous/infamous of Canada’s public hous- government] to ensure that as large a por- ing projects, Toronto’s Regent Park. As tion as possible of housing be built by the Brushett (2001, p. 98) argues: “Regent Park private sector” (quoted in Sewell, 1994, p. represented the first salvo in Toronto’s, 7). Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent said and indeed, Canada’s modern war on in October, 1947: “No government of slums, and soon became the paradigm for which I am a part will ever pass legisla- urban renewal throughout the nation”. tion for subsidized housing” (quoted in Canada has experienced a shortage of Rose, 1958, p. 85). Thereafter, in the post- adequate, low-income rental housing Second World War period, almost all fed- throughout the 20th century, the conse- eral housing programs were aimed at quence of low incomes, racism, and bad home ownership, and at those who could landlords on the demand side, and of the afford home ownership, rather than at limited number of low-income rental units rental accommodation for those with low produced by the largely private, for-profit incomes (Sewell, 1993, pp. 91-92). developers on the supply side (Purdy, 2003b, pp. 458-460). “Unlike almost any other consumer good, the free market b. The Rise and Fall of Urban cannot, as social reformers have long Renewal in Canada lamented, supply decent affordable Nevertheless, there was in Canada, as in housing for the entire range of in- the USA, a brief period—between 1949 comes” (Brushett, 2001, p. 59). This fail- and 1968—when large public housing ure of the market to deliver much- projects like Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park needed housing for low-income people and Toronto’s Regent Park, were con- was the backdrop to urban renewal and structed. As in the USA, they were built public housing in Canada. as part of a ‘slum clearance’, or urban re- Despite the demonstrable need, Canada newal program. The provisions were set was slow in getting into public housing, out in the 1949 National Housing Act lagging behind the USA (Brushett, 2001, (NHA), which required that the federal p. 238). Even now, Canada has “the small- government pay 75 percent of the costs, est social housing sector of any Western the remaining 25 percent to be paid by the nation except for the United States”, with province (Sewell, 1994, p. 133). Under the only 5 percent of Canadian households 1964 NHA, the federal government would living in social housing (Hulchanski, 2003, pay 90 percent of capital costs, share op-

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 37 erating losses equally with the provinces, houses, could mitigate the pathologi- and leave ownership vested with the cal effects of slum areas” (Brushett, provinces. The 1964 Act was a “turning 2001, p. 110). point” for the development of public hous- In Toronto, especially, despite corporate ing in Canada: “In 1964 there were about and government opposition, there was 10,000 units of public housing in Canada; consistent public pressure for government by the end of 1974 that number had risen involvement in housing. A reform coali- to 115,000” (Sewell, 1994, p. 135). tion led by the Citizens’ Housing and Numerous reports had been published in Planning Association successfully pushed the period leading up to and immediately for a question on the ballot for the 1947 after the Second World War, drawing at- Toronto civic election calling for the ex- tention to the ‘slum’ conditions in large penditure of $5.9 million for the creation Canadian cities, and calling for some ver- of Regent Park North, and voters sup- sion of ‘urban renewal’, featuring the tear- ported it (Sewell, 1993, p. 71; Brushett, ing down of ‘slums’ and their replacement 2001, p. 126; Rose, 1958, p. 68). This was with public housing. “Extensive studies six years before a similar question in Win- of Halifax, Hamilton, Ottawa, Winnipeg, nipeg, on the 1953 civic election ballot, Montreal, and Toronto in the early 1930s failed, largely because in Winnipeg, un- showed a proliferation of dilapidated like Toronto, there was at that time no housing conditions, lack of affordable powerful citizens’ group calling for urban housing units and rampant social dis- renewal and public housing. tress” (Purdy, 2003c, p. 52). The Bruce Report of 1934, officially called the Lieu- The 1947 approval of civic money for pub- tenant Governor’s Report on Housing Con- lic housing led directly to the razing of the ditions in Toronto (Sewell, 1993, pp. 66-72; Toronto ‘slum’, Cabbagetown, and its re- Rose, 1958, pp. 37-45; Brushett, 2001, p. placement with Regent Park North (RPN). ix), for example, “contains the first slum The design of RPN was typical of large clearance and rehousing plans for urban renewal/ public housing projects Cabbagetown, which later became Regent of the time: “get rid of the street system; Park” and “soon became the ‘bible’ of so- demolish as many buildings as possible; cial housing activists, not only in Toronto, create great chunks of open space; and but across Canada” (Brushett, 2001, pp. build functional structures that looked ix and 105). Its philosophy was typical of entirely different from everything else” the 19th century-inspired belief—environ- ( Sewell, 1993, p. 150). mental determinism—that all social prob- The impact on residents of the ‘slums’ was lems were caused by slums, and could be typical of the experience elsewhere. solved with the eradication of slums: Brushett (2001, p. 99) observes that: “slum “the authors of the Bruce Report de- clearance and its later euphemism, urban clared that better housing would cut renewal, soon ran roughshod over the mortality rates and stamp out prostitu- rights and interests of the very people it tion, reduce crime and eliminate intended to benefit. Like all other projects juvenile delinquency, but only if they that would follow it, the destruction of could completely remodel the environ- Cabbagetown and its renewal as Regent ment, by wiping away the old and Park was both brutal and authoritarian build again on a grand scale. Only the in its implementation”. As we have seen, elimination of the entire slum neigh- the same was the case in Winnipeg’s bourhood, not just the individual slum Salter-Jarvis area.

38 North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development In Toronto, a series of urban renewal of the poor. They have too many projects were built between the 1940s and ‘problem’ families without adequate 1960s: Regent Park North and Regent Park social services and too many children South; Moss Park; Alexandra Park; Don without adequate recreational facili- Mount (Sewell, 1993, pp. 152-155). Each ties. There is a serious lack of privacy involved the destruction of existing neigh- and an equally serious lack of pride bourhoods and their replacement with which leads only to physical degenera- public housing that was largely inconsist- tion of the premises themselves. The ent with, and physically distinct from, the common rent-geared-to-income for- character of the pre-existing neighbour- mulas do breed disincentive and a hoods. The total number of units of low- ‘what’s the use’ attitude toward self income housing was reduced, ie., more and income improvement. There is a housing was destroyed than was replaced social stigma attached to life in a by public housing (Purdy, 2003c, p. 55). public housing project which touches And as was the case in the clearance of its inhabitants in many aspects of their Winnipeg’s Salter-Jarvis area, and urban daily lives” (Hellyer, 1969, pp. 53-54). renewal programs of the time throughout North America, large numbers of those c. The Power and Danger of displaced moved within a one-mile radius Popular Discourse of their original residence, and in at least some cases, ended up in worse housing Despite the commonality of views about situations (Brushett, 2001, p. 340). large public housing projects being expressed at the time in Canada and the However, the attempt to do the same in USA, it is important to be cautious about, Toronto’s Trefann Court met stiff opposi- and even skeptical of, the ways in which tion from neighbourhood residents, who low-income urban areas, including pub- insisted upon resident input into planning lic housing projects, are described in and the selection of planners, and a de- popular discourse. The language applied sign that maintained the existing street to such areas—describing them as structures and included infill housing ‘slums’, for example—conjures up spe- (Sewell, 1993, pp. 161-162). Sewell argues cific images, which can drive public that “Trefann Court spelled the end of policy. The question is, are those images urban renewal in Canada”, and led to the and is that discourse an accurate repre- establishment in 1968 of a federal task sentation of life in those neighbour- force headed by Paul Hellyer to review hoods? Too often, they are not. housing policy (Sewell, 1993, p. 162. See also Brushett, 2001, p. 35). Brushett (2001, p. iii) argues that the process of urban renewal, and its destruction The report of the Hellyer task force was of low-income neighbourhoods— extremely critical of urban renewal, and ‘slums’—“was due, in large part, to the called for its end. Hellyer’s Task Force on way in which these neighbourhoods were Housing and Urban Development, portrayed in popular discourse”. whose report was released in January “All too often Toronto’s working class 1969, said the following about urban re- neighbourhoods were viewed through newal and public housing, echoing the lens of the ‘Victorian slum’ and voices south of the border: universally portrayed as landscapes of “The big housing projects, in the view disease, despair and degeneracy— of the Task Force, have become ghettos both physically and morally. The

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 39 inability of Toronto to move beyond a Brushett (2001, p. 4) argues, has been the kind of ‘Victorian environmentalism’ case with low-income urban neighbour- to comprehend the diverse realities of hoods. The language, the signs, the rep- inner city neighbourhoods led to the resentations of the ‘slum’, create ‘imag- physical and social destruction of ined communities’ comprised largely of much of working class Toronto” stereotypes. These stereotypes have had (Brushett, 2001, p. iii). policy effects: The words used to describe inner city “slum stereotypes were crucial to the Toronto neighbourhoods such as advancement of particular political Cabbagetown, in addition to ‘slums’, in- agendas. Close attention must be paid cluded: ‘cancer’, ‘diseased’, ‘decay’, to the words and images used to ‘criminal’, ‘dark’, ‘squalid’, ‘blight’, ‘fes- construct slums in the popular imagi- tering’, ‘immorality’ (Brushett, 2001, p. nation, because they relate directly to 15). Slums were places of “disease, dis- the solutions proposed and acted tress, disorder, disaffection and decay” upon to solve ‘the problem of the (Brushett, 2001, p. 3). “Images of poor slum’.... there were many ways to housing conditions, poverty, filth and solve the housing problems of Toron- moral wickedness were condensed into to’s poor, but there was only one way one striking picture of abject misery that to solve the problem of the slum—that was propagated en masse by the reform is to erase it, to wipe the blots from lobby, state officials and the main me- the face of the city through massive dia outlets in Toronto and nationally” urban renewal and public housing (Purdy, 2005, p. 530). projects which were the most costly solution of all”. This language, this slum narrative, was used to justify the wholesale destruction The problem was that in constructing low- of neighbourhoods. In this way, Brushett income neighbourhoods as slums, “plan- (2001, pp. 1-2) argues: “Toronto’s poor ners, state officials and social reformers neighbourhoods—slums—were imag- fundamentally misunderstood poverty as ined communities... constructions of lan- well as the lives of the poor” (Brushett, guage and culture”. The result is that, for 2001, p. 27; see also Purdy, 2003c, p. 57). many, “To discuss slums is to deal with Yauk (1973) has made clear that this was words, with discourse, with signs and the precisely what happened in Winnipeg’s concepts they communicated as much as Salter-Jarvis neighbourhood. Viewed with the social geography of inner cities”. through middle class eyes by planners with no direct knowledge of the neigh- In short, outside observers were not re- bourhood nor its people, Salter-Jarvis was ally seeing the low-income neighbour- seen simply as a ‘slum’, and was bull- hoods; they were ‘seeing’ the imagery dozed in its entirety. The results were dev- created by their depiction, in language astating for many who had lived there, and in imagery, as ‘slums’. Edward Said, and who had seen it as a ‘good neighbour- in his classic study Orientalism, described hood to be poor in’. how an elaborate system of myths, sym- bols and representations of the Middle Nor is this a phenomenon confined to the East was created by scholars and govern- past. Purdy (2005, p. 524) argues this is ments, obscuring and distorting the Mid- what has happened recently with Regent dle East in order to advance imperial Park, which has been socially constructed ambitions (Said, 1978). The same, as an “‘outcast space’... a ‘branded space’,

40 North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development and its tenants as social ‘outcasts’”. He at the time it was built”, and for the next analyzes the effect of the NFB’s documen- two decades was widely upheld “as evi- tary film, Return to Regent Park (1994), in dence of how the principles of modern creating a “powerful place-based stigma planning could magnificently transform [which] ... would complement the damn- the lives of society’s poorer members” ing and pervasive characterizations of (Brushett, 2001, pp. 42 and 98). Regent Park residents by social workers, Early tenants of Regent Park were happy academics and the media”. Purdy (2005, with their new housing. “In place of a p. 530) argues that: home in often deplorable condition at a “Considerable historical research has rent that took a large portion of the fam- been conducted on external, often ily income, they were moved into a large racialized, depictions of ‘slum’ neigh- new apartment with rent based on in- bourhoods, for instance, showing that come” (Sewell, 1993, p. 72). Hugh Garner, the substance and rhetoric of slum author of the classic Canadian novel, representations revealed more about Cabbagetown, writes in the Author’s Pref- the distinctly white, middle class ace to the 1968 edition that: notions of what constituted a proper “The new housing was a godsend to the neighbourhood and requisite behav- ex-Cabbagetowners, a relief to the iour than they did about the actual police force and a welcome change to physical, social and cultural environ- the district firefighters. The social ments of the poor and minorities. agencies now had fewer calls, and the From the disorderly, Victorian slums of charities fewer local recipients. The the 19th century to the dangerous ‘no new generations of Cabbagetowners go’ neighbourhoods of today, these had money and jobs, which most of slum representations have had a those who came before them had not” tenacious hold on the imaginations (Garner, 1968, p. viii. See also Rose pp. and practices of 20th century urban 120-121, and pp. 134 passim). reformers, the media, state officials and the wider public”. Purdy (2003c, p. 135) adds:

The danger is that a similar process may “There is substantial evidence from the still be at work, creating distorted images first decades of the project, further- of life in the ‘projects’ as the basis for more, that residents, most of whom HOPE VI-type programs. Purdy (2003c, were former renters living in sub- p. 42), for example, observes that: “the standard housing, were fond of their [current] discourse of redevelopment is dwelling units. Early newspaper reminiscent of the 1940s arguments for reports show that people were genu- urban renewal, condemning tenants for inely pleased with the new spacious their slum pathologies and arguing that accommodations and facilities, a environmental transformation will make finding shared by oral histories of the Regent Park a healthy community.” early days of American housing projects.... More recent oral and docu- d. The Early Promise of mentary testimony gathered by the Public Housing author confirm these sentiments. Many found the apartments spacious, As was the case in the US, public housing well kept and in sound condition”. in Canada was initially successful. Regent Park was “hailed as a universal success Tough screening of applicants confined

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 41 Regent Park in the early years largely to too impersonal, too bureaucratic, and two-parent working families, particularly was largely alien from the interests of veterans. Applicants underwent a per- its residents.... the massive super-block sonal home visit by a Regent Park staff projects created ‘ghettos of the poor’ member, were evaluated on a five-point by physically and socially isolating scale for ‘Suitability as a Tenant’ (Purdy, them from the rest of the city. By the 2003a, p. 8), and ‘problem families’— 1970s Regent Park had returned to the those “whose family relationships, behav- landscape of poverty, crime, and iour and moral standards, and standards despair that had once marked of housekeeping are so far below the ac- Cabbagetown in planners ’‘bad books’, cepted standards that they are judged in- and had animated their plans for its capable of improvement”—were kept out removal” (Brushett, 2001, pp. 98-99). (Rose, 1958, p. 205). There were long wait- In 2002 the Toronto Star described Regent ing lists to get in (Purdy, 2003b, p. 461): Park “as a ‘poster child for poverty’” “Even before RPN [Regent Park North] (Purdy, 2003a, p. 2). had been completed in 1957 there were Purdy examines the demographic and 7000 applications on file for the project. socio-economic characteristics of Regent From the inception of the waiting list Park tenants over a 40 year period, from for RPS [Regent Park South] in 1957 to the 1940s to the 1970s. He finds that the the end of 1959, there were 13,527 socio-economic composition of Regent inquiries received by the MTHA Park tenants began to diverge dramati- [Metro Toronto Housing Authority]. By cally from that of Toronto as a whole, 1959 the waiting list for these units starting in the mid-to-late 1960s (Purdy, was almost 10,000 names long. By 2003a, p. 3). 1970, the Metro Toronto housing registry office had 38 employees to The proportion of Regent Park tenants receive 10,000 calls a month and 2000 who are single parents went from around new applications a month. Applica- 7 percent in the late 1950s, to approxi- tions on file reached 16,000 in 1969" mately 17 percent in the mid-1960s, to (Purdy, 2003b, p. 465; see also more than 50 percent in 1981 (Purdy, Brushett, 2001, pp. 363-364). 2003a, p. 12). Incomes for women and men in Regent Park were about on par This huge demand for public housing is with Toronto as a whole when Regent evidence of the need that public housing Park opened in the 1950s. The gap began projects like Regent Park were meeting. to widen slowly at first, and then “especially from 1970 to 1990, the gap widened radically between public housing resi- e. The Problems With Public dents and the general population in Met- Housing Now ropolitan Toronto: family income figures in Regent Park South were less than half Within 20 years of its establishment Re- that of Metropolitan Toronto from 1970 to gent Park was being condemned as a 1990 while wage earners in Regent Park ‘new slum’, a ‘colossal flop’ (Purdy, North earned less than one-third of Met- 2003a, p. 2). ropolitan Toronto wage earners in 1980– “Regent Park became the symbol of all 90” (Purdy, 2003a, p. 17). The same trend that was wrong with modern planning applies with respect to unemployment and public housing: it was too large, levels: from the 1970s to the 1990s the gap

42 North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development between Regent Park unemployment lev- the 1970s and 1980s did larger numbers els and those of Toronto as a whole wid- of Caribbean and Asian families opt for ened, particularly in the 1980s and espe- state-assisted housing in Toronto”. The cially for Regent Park youth (Purdy, 2003a, proportion of Regent Park residents born pp. 19-20). Rose (1958, p. 125) shows that outside of Canada went from just under this trend started early. At July 1, 1954, 20 percent in 1961, to 60 percent in 2001 there were 19 families in Regent Park (Globe and Mail, Apr. 2, 2005). Murdie North on municipal relief, “a year later (1994) shows that from 1971 to 1986, there were 25, and on July 1, 1956, there while the proportion of Blacks in Toronto were 32 families on relief”. These figures, grew from 2.5 to 5 percent, the propor- he says, “are an indication of the admis- tion living in public housing grew from sion of more families from outside the 4.2 to 27 percent. As a consequence of project area who are dependent on public these changes, “Bitter relations between assistance”. In the 1950s and early 1960s police and youth, especially young Black families on social assistance were limited men, and the special educational, em- to 15–20 percent of the Regent Park total. ployment, and cultural needs of immi- That changed dramatically over time grants have been two of the most press- (Purdy, 2003c, p. 103). ing issues in the Regent Park community Women were particularly affected. With in the last two decades” (Purdy, 2003b, a shortage of low-rent housing, a short- pp. 462-463 and p. 25). age of daycare, and labour market dis- While these changes in the socio-eco- crimination against women leading to nomic characteristics of Regent Park ten- lower than male incomes if they could get ants were occurring, funding for public jobs at all, women in particular were in housing was being cut, starting in the need of public housing. And “those most 1970s, consistent with cuts to other social needing public housing were mother-led programs, by governments that were “al- families and those on social assistance, ways penurious, half-hearted supporters which explains the particular social com- of public housing” (Purdy, 2003a, p. 30). position and abysmally low incomes of tenants in the project” (Purdy, 2003a, p. During the same period, dramatic 33). Purdy (2003b, p. 462) says: “In the changes in the political economy of urban 1960s, more and more applications for Canada reduced job opportunities in the public housing appear to have been moti- manufacturing sector. This was the case vated by the desire to escape from abu- in Toronto, and especially downtown To- sive men. Robert Bradley, RPN manager, ronto where Regent Park is located. Re- claimed that applications from ‘broken gent Park tenants were adversely affected: families’, 98 percent of them women and “Project level data for 1949, 1953, and the majority fleeing abuse, increased over 1961 show that numerous Regent Park 100 percent in 1965". North residents worked at large The marginalization and social exclusion industrial establishments, which of people of colour in both Canada and would be gradually caught up in the USA has meant that they, too, are dis- suburban industrial decentralization proportionately represented among the and high contraction and plant closure tenants of public housing: “until the 1970s, rates from the 1950s to the 1980s.... the the vast majority of public housing appli- locational shift and contraction or loss cants and residents in English Canada of large, unionized, and relatively well- were of Anglo-Canadian origin. Only in paid manufacturing industry employ-

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 43 ment in postwar Toronto limited the live in large inner city public housing possibilities of finding well-paid projects with the use of such concepts as work close to the downtown Toronto ‘territorial stigmatization’, and ‘branded location of Regent Park, especially spaces’, and says “neighbourhood frames with the majority of families in the many important aspects of identity forma- project unable to afford a car” tion”. In particular, “the spatial contain- (Purdy, 2003a, p. 32) . ment of low-income neighbourhoods By the 1980s this had made drug-related through cultural labelling and material opportunities more attractive. Increased discrimination have had harmful effects crime, violence and gang activity resulted on their inhabitants, especially young peo- (Globe and Mail, Apr. 2, 2005). This in turn ple”. The voices of Regent Park tenants added to the stigma attached to Regent reflect that feeling. The mother of a youth Park and its residents. As Purdy (2003a, who lived in Regent Park and was shot p. 34) describes it: and killed in 2001 said: “No one cares what happens to a boy like my son. Eve- “Condemned as too large and badly ryone judges you when you come from designed by academics, as a haven of Regent Park. They make you feel like a single mothers, welfare families, and piece of shit. That’s how they made my deviants by governments and the media, a magnet for crime and drug son feel, and that’s how they made me problems by police and law and order feel”. A young woman added: “You can advocates, and the site of potentially feel like there’s no way out. It overwhelms explosive ‘racial’ problems by many people, and takes away their energy” popular commentators, Regent Park (Globe and Mail, Apr. 2, 2005). had come full circle in the public mind The result is that public housing, which from the ‘ordered community’ of the came to be the ‘housing of last resort’ for 1940s” (Purdy, 2003a, p. 34). the poorest of the poor, and for a particu- And as was the case in large American larly racialized form of poverty in hol- public housing projects, Regent Park lowed-out inner cities in Canada as in the youth came to feel confined to their pub- USA, became deeply stigmatized, wors- lic housing project, limited in the oppor- ening the problems of its tenants, and con- tunities open to them. tributing to the association between public housing and gang-based, drug-related “The streets surrounding Regent Park... violence. Yet the problem, as in the USA, marked not only the physical but also is less the public housing as such, than the the ideological boundaries of Regent problems created by the dramatic changes Park for many young people, beyond in North America’s urban political which a different world resided. economy, whose victims have dispropor- Considerable research on identity tionately ended up in public housing. formation among inner city youth has They have ended up in public housing found that ideas about employment, because of the paucity of alternatives: “In- education, and relationships with deed, after the long economic boom ended other groups are crucially shaped by in the 1970s, lack of affordable housing internal spatial contexts such as neigh- has been one of the chief features of the bourhood” (Purdy, 2003a, pp. 35-36). new urban poverty in all advanced capi- Purdy (2003c, pp.34-35) describes the stig- talist countries” (Purdy, 2003b, p. 471). matization process that affects those who

44 North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development f. The Redevelopment zation process: diversity of building of Regent Park types, designs and heights; diversity of tenures; diversity and mix of incomes; A plan to revitalize Regent Park is now diversity and mix of uses; diversity of underway. It draws on the US experience, builders; and diversity of activities” but includes some more progressive fea- (RPCT, 2002, p. 5). tures, and may—this remains to be seen— avoid the worst problems of displace- On the people-oriented, community- ment. As in the HOPE VI approach, the building side, space would be made avail- Regent Park plan has two components: a able for various employment and business massive bulldozing, redesign and rebuild- development initiatives; some innovative ing of bricks and mortar; and an intensi- educational programs already in place or fication of people-oriented, community- being contemplated—for example, the building programs. York University teacher-training program now located in Regent Park; the The bulldozing, bricks and mortar part of Pathways to Education program; the the strategy for the redevelopment of Re- University of Toronto’s 10 week pilot gent Park appears to be built on the as- course for Regent Park tenants—would sumption that the problem to be solved is be built upon; and the coordination of primarily one of design. The plan—called community services would be enhanced the Regent Park Revitalization Study, pre- (RPCT, 2002, pp. 41-46). pared by the Regent Park Collaborative Team (RPCT, Dec. 2002)—proposes to de- The document is rife with references to molish all of the existing 2087 units in six HOPE VI, as is reflected in its two-part phases over 10-12 years, starting in the Fall approach with the primary emphasis of 2005, and to replace them with build- upon redesign. The total cost is anticipated ings that “will be generally mid-rise and to be approximately $450 million. mixed-use along the main streets and low- This plan is subject to all of the concerns rise and residential within the neighbour- that arise with HOPE VI, although it may hood on internal streets” (RPCT, 2002, p. be that the worst problems arising from 2). In addition to replacing the 2087 exist- HOPE VI—the displacement of low-in- ing units, the plan also contemplates an come tenants because of the reduction in additional 2400 units of “market housing” the numbers of low-income rental units— to be constructed by the private sector. will be avoided. That remains to be seen. Subsidized housing would be mixed with units rented at market rates and owner- There are at least two ways of interpret- occupied homes. The project, previously ing and assessing the revitalization of set apart from the surrounding area by Regent Park. One argues that the build- its typical, large public housing design ings at Regent Park have never been ad- featuring numerous tower blocks, would equately maintained, and so have to be be reintegrated with the surrounding torn down and replaced, and if this is go- area by reintroducing a grid street sys- ing to be done, it is best that a mixed-in- tem and realigning buildings so that they come community be built to replace what face onto streets. previously existed. Further, pressure from tenants and community-based organiza- “The main theme that links all of the tions at Regent Park has been an impor- elements of this plan together is the tant factor in the development of a Social importance of striving for diversity as Development Plan, which complements a key organizing feature of the revitali- the bricks and mortar plan, and requires

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 45 that any approvals for physical changes Value in Toronto’s East Downtown: The be subject to the Social Development Plan, Revitalization of Regent Park”—Dr. and requires also that every rent-geared- Mitchell Kosny, Chair of Toronto Commu- to-income (RGI) unit that is knocked nity Housing, the civic agency responsi- down be replaced by a new RGI unit, so ble for Regent Park, said: “I want to make that there is not the net reduction in the one thing perfectly clear: Rebuilding Re- numbers of low-income rental units that gent Park will be a true partnership be- has characterized the American HOPE VI tween Toronto Community Housing Cor- initiatives. The optimistic way of viewing poration and the private sector... and we the revitalization of Regent Park is to say are now open for business” (his emphasis). that planners have learned from, and are He explained that the area around Regent not repeating, the worst of the mistakes Park “has been experiencing an impres- made south of the border. sive economic rebirth”, is close to down- The second and alternative way of view- town and to related culture and entertain- ing the revitalization of Regent Park is to ment pursuits, and “the development say that, as is the case with HOPE VI, it is opportunity is obvious”. A tenant, ex- yet another version of ‘environmental de- pressing the views of at least some in Re- terminism’—the view that the social gent Park, is reported to have said: problems of ‘slums’ are caused by their “They’re tearing down Regent Park be- physical character, especially the charac- cause rich people want the land” (Globe ter and condition of the houses, with the and Mail, Apr. 2, 2005). corollary that the solution is to bulldoze However, like HOPE VI, the social side the ‘slums’ and build new housing. The of the revitalization of Regent Park offers new environment and the new housing, some real hope. For example, the educa- this approach holds, will solve the prob- tional initiatives already underway in Re- lems. This is an idea that has its origins gent Park and intended to be expanded, in the Victorian era, and that has already are likely to improve the lives of Regent been tried with the bulldozing and re- Park tenants. The Pathways to Education building of the ‘urban renewal’/public program, developed and run by the Re- housing era in the 1950s and 1960s. Re- gent Park Community Health Centre, ap- placing ‘slums’ with new housing does pears successful. Started in 2001, the pro- not, in itself, solve socio-economic prob- gram is aimed at the 50 percent or more lems, because it does not get at their of Regent Park residents who are under roots. This is especially the case when the the age of 19 years, and is a response to revitalization of Regent Park, despite its the relatively low rates of high school enormous cost and despite the continued graduation among RP youth. Pathways to need for affordable rental housing for Education has four elements. Intensive low-income people, is intended to add, tutoring is offered in all high school sub- on a net basis, not a single additional unit jects by a large pool of tutors, many of of subsidized rental housing. whom are university students and/or What is worse, there are fears that the re- former residents of Regent Park who seek vitalization of Regent Park may be about to give back to their community. Mentoring gentrifying the neighbourhood as much is offered, focusing on life-skills and com- as it is about improving the lives of those munication for students in grades 9 and who live there. In a speech to the Eco- 10, and on career and leadership devel- nomic Club of Toronto in March, 2005— opment programs for those in grades 11 titled, perhaps revealingly, “Unlocking and 12. Financial assistance is made avail-

46 North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development able to all Regent Park students in the pro- and replaced, and that the new Regent gram—and 95 percent of Regent Park Park that emerges in the place of the old— youth are in the program—in the form of because it will be a mixed-income com- free bus passes to get to school, plus a munity and because there is expected to $1000 scholarship per student per year of be no net loss of low-income housing— high school completed, to be used for will be a much better place to live. Others post-secondary tuition. And Student Par- are more skeptical, fearing that the plan ent Support Workers provide a link be- is yet another gentrification initiative in tween students, parents and schools to disguise, and that without constant vigi- advocate for and support students and lance the promises to maintain the exist- their families, and to ensure that students ing numbers of low-income rental units are progressing. It is claimed that as a will not be kept. These skeptics point to result of the program, student absentee- the fact that Toronto Community Hous- ism rates have been cut in half, and 75 ing has already said that, while they will percent of the cohort of students first replace all of the low-income rental units, enrolled in the program in 2001 are ex- not all of them will be on the ‘footprint’ of pected to graduate in Spring, 2006 the Regent Park site. Some will be in sur- (www.pathwaystoeducation.ca, accessed rounding neighbourhoods. The fear is that 1/3/2006; Acker, personal interview, April this may be a ‘slippery slope’. 20, 2006; Rowen, personal interview, It is not yet clear what the outcome of the April 20, 2006). revitalization of Regent Park will be. Those What is notable, however, is that this pro- tenants and community-based organiza- gram has been initiated and has achieved tions who argue that, given the American considerable success before the redesign experience with HOPE VI, constant vigi- and rebuilding of Regent Park. Its success lance will be necessary, are probably be- has not been the result of, nor has it re- ing appropriately prudent. The outcome quired, the redesign of Regent Park. This remains to be seen, and because it is Re- suggests that real gains can be made by gent Park—Canada’s oldest and largest focusing more on ‘people programs’ than public housing project—the outcome will on bricks and mortar. What is more, peo- be important for public housing every- ple programs can be implemented much where in Canada. more economically. Pathways to Educa- tion will cost $3.25 million in 2006, most of it paid by businesses, community g. The Explanations for groups, unions and individuals. The pro- the Problems vincial government will contribute A dominant explanation for the problems $500,000 of the cost (Rowen, personal in- associated with public housing in Canada, terview, April 20,2006. See also Globe and as in the USA, is design. The argument is Mail, editorial, Sept. 28, 2005). By compari- that the design of the large public hous- son, the bulldozing and rebuilding of Re- ing projects, influenced by Le Corbusier, gent Park over 10–12 years is expected to has created unsafe conditions. This is an cost approximately $450 million. argument advanced most cogently by Interpretations of the revitalization of Re- Jane Jacobs (1961), Oscar Newman (1973), gent Park differ, depending upon who is Alice Coleman (1985) and John Sewell asked. Many believe that Regent Park (1993). Jacobs, writing in the foreword to housing has not been adequately main- Sewell’s 1993 book on urban planning in tained, and therefore has to be torn down Toronto, in referring to the 1950s and

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 47 1960s urban renewal era, says: “Not to housing was left to deal with the result- mince words, planners and their working ing human problems. colleagues did not know what they were Coincident with, and largely as a conse- doing. Their remedies for slums, conges- quence of, this process, the socio-eco- tion, and other maladies were frauds” nomic composition of large public hous- (Jacobs, in Sewell, 1993, p. x). Jacobs et al ing projects like Regent Park and those in argue that the solution to the problems of the USA began to change dramatically— large public housing projects is to rede- from two-parent, working class families sign the projects, reintegrating them into in the 1950s and early 1960s, to lone-par- the existing street grid, ensuring that units ent families on social assistance from the face onto streets and have front and back 1970s to the present. Inner city public yards, and eliminating pedestrian path- housing projects increasingly became ways (Sewell, 1993, pp. 228-229). ‘housing of last resort’ for the victims of But the burden of the argument advanced broader socio-economic forces, and dis- in this paper is that these design changes proportionately these were women with deal only with the surface manifestations children on social assistance, and people of the problems of public housing, and of colour. With the shortage of good qual- that a deeper understanding requires an ity, low-income rental housing—and this examination of broader societal trends has been the heart of the problem—such and socio-economic forces. people had nowhere else to go. And as public housing became home to those From the beginning, public housing in most adversely affected by the dramati- both Canada and the USA was strongly cally changing urban political economy, opposed by business and governments. governments cut spending on repairs Partly as a consequence, many public and maintenance. A stigma became at- housing developments were poorly con- tached to public housing, and those who structed. Evidence of this in the US case were its tenants. has already been provided. Dennis and Fish (1972, pp. 174-175) offer clear evi- By the 1980s, with an increasingly under- dence that Canada’s federal government funded public housing stock serving as deliberately set out to construct low- housing of last resort for large numbers quality housing that would not compete of those most victimized by the hollow- with the private for-profit housing pro- ing out of the inner city, the drug trade viders (see also Rose, 1958, p. 74; Purdy, arose to offer economic opportunities for 2003c, p. 82). increasingly stigmatized project youth who had—and who were increasingly Also, public housing’s being linked to ur- convinced that they had—few other alter- ban renewal necessitated that most pub- natives. Gangs seized upon the projects lic housing was built in inner cities, which to recruit members and earn big money, over the course of the 20th century became and public housing, already stigmatized, increasingly distressed. Public housing became home to drug-driven, gang-re- did not cause the deterioration of the in- lated violence. ner cities; broader forces did. Inner cities were ‘hollowed out’ by the powerful forces The decline of public housing over a 50 of suburbanization and de-industrializa- year period in Canada and the USA has tion. But because so much public housing less to do with its design, than with these was constructed in inner cities, public tragic broader forces.

48 North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development Part Four: Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development, 1967–2006 a. Problems in the crack, marijuana, everything.... I live in the Development Today Towers here, and I know people in there that are dealing drugs”. This is made the The Lord Selkirk Park Housing Develop- worse by the strong sense of social exclu- ment—the ‘Development’, or ‘the D’, as sion experienced by many of the mostly- it is called in the area—experiences the Aboriginal seniors. Many “have a great same problems that have plagued large deal of difficulty negotiating the system, housing projects elsewhere in the past 40 and have quite an unwillingness to ask years. This became clear when interviews somebody for help with that”. In at least were conducted in May, 2005, with 20 one case, some women seniors were people involved in providing services in placed by Manitoba Housing in the North- the Development. ern Hotel—a rough hotel on north Main Those interviewed told us that the Devel- close to the ‘D’—where “their housing opment is plagued by drugs, gangs and conditions were absolutely appalling”. violence. Much good work is done in the Children, too, are adversely affected. One ‘D’; there is no shortage of highly-dedi- youth worker told us that: cated and skilled people doing the work; and there is a small core of tenants dedi- “In the last two years I’ve watched kids cated to improving the Development. But who were doing well with their lives the problems associated with gangs, just go straight down hill because they drugs and violence are significant. got hooked on drugs with these drug dealers, they give ‘em free drugs and Seniors, for example, feel vulnerable. One they’re gone. It’s really sad, it’s very woman who works with seniors told us hard to sleep some nights when you that: “A lot of seniors just don’t want to don’t know whether those kids are leave their homes. They feel vulnerable... gonna be alive the next day”. and they feel targeted.... There’s a lot of gang activity in this particular neighbour- Nor is home a refuge for some of these hood”, and they “make life very difficult children. The youth worker continued: for most people who live in the area”. “Some of these kids don’t have a home to go to. They have an address, but it’s The tower building in the ‘D’ is a seniors’ not a home for them, they just don’t complex, but Manitoba Housing allows want to go home. We had some kids non-seniors to rent there. The result is sleeping in vans here, 40 below, broke drug-dealing, gang activity and violence into a van that was parked for the right in the building. Many seniors are winter and slept in there for three afraid to leave their apartments. One sen- days. They just didn’t want to go ior told us, when we asked about the prob- home, because all there is is alcohol lems in the neighbourhood: “Well, espe- and violence there”. cially here it’s drugs, that’s number one... There’s more drugs in this thing here than The gangs are a central part of this trag- I think half of the pharmaceutical compa- edy. “High, high influence of gang mem- nies in the country, especially here in the bers in here. Drug-dealers. Big. I’d say Development, eh? There’s coke, there’s maybe 40 percent or more.... it’s just, in

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 49 almost every one of those row houses People become trapped. Controlled by there’s a drug-dealer in there. Now, outside forces, they cannot see a way out. they’re working on cleaning them out, The problem becomes “when you’re stuck but it’s still happening”. in that mode of being controlled by whatever it is, whether it’s the system, or a per- A woman who works in an agency adjoin- son, or the neighbourhood, or the gangs.... ing the ‘D’ described a 7 or 8 year old boy When you’re in it, you can’t see differ- who had come to her program—which is ently”, you can’t see a way out, an alter- not a youth program—and said: “Can you native to your present circumstances. help me, I don’t want to join the gangs, Hope is lost; despair sets in; and change they’re always after me”. He became one is exceptionally difficult. of the kids who was lost to the gangs. “The boy, he’s now 18, he’s right into the gang A major part of the problem is the ongo- thing. You feel so frustrated!” ing effects of the colonization of Aborigi- nal people. The ‘D’ is largely Aboriginal. Violence against women is common: do- Aboriginal people have long been sub- mestic violence; the violence of the street jected to the process of colonization (see sex trade. In many cases the term ‘street sidebar, p. 51), with its false assumptions sex trade’ is completely inappropriate be- about Aboriginal inferiority and its pro- cause those involved are children, some motion of shame about all things Aborigi- as young as 12 years old. They are more nal. Many Aboriginal people have inter- accurately thought of as sexually ex- nalized those false beliefs, and carry a ploited. “And a lot of the really young personal sense of inferiority and shame ones are from the Dufferin-Lord Selkirk about being Aboriginal. Some people Park area”. working in the ‘D’ see this clearly. “It’s about the youth learning who they are, to Safety is, for many in the Lord Selkirk learn their history, to know who they are, Park neighbourhood, the number one con- to stand in their truth so that there is no cern. One woman said: more shame in who you are as a human “ Safety is a huge one. It’s a huge chal- being, just because you’re brown”. But lenge. People don’t feel safe. They’re many do not understand this truth. Many do not see it. “The community itself afraid. They’re afraid of teenagers. doesn’t realize that. Never mind that They’re afraid of our youth. People are White people don’t know; our own people afraid of their own kids, they’re afraid don’t know what happened to them.... of their own partners, they’re not safe That’s why we’re in the state we’re in.... in their own home”. Children don’t have a sense of knowing Given this environment, people’s involve- who they are... they don’t know where ment in the neighbourhood is low. When they came from, their parents don’t know asked what is not working well, one per- who they are or where they came from”. son said: “Getting the community in- The harm done to Aboriginal people over volved”. She described it as a cycle: “with many long years has been colossal, and drug addiction leading to crime that be- the results are acted out daily in the ‘D’. comes inter-generational, which then The stigma typically attached to tenants seems to lead to people really not being of large, 1960s-style public housing involved in their community. It seems to projects is felt by those who live in the all be part of a very large, very unhealthy Development, and is accentuated by the cycle for people”. effects of colonization.

50 North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development Aboriginal People and Colonization

A central part of Canada’s history is the colonization of Aboriginal people. Aboriginal people have been dispossessed of their lands, pushed onto reserves and thus isolated from the dominant culture and institutions of Canada, subjected to the colonial control of the Indian Act and the domination of the Indian Agent, forced into residential schools. At the heart of the process of colonization was the deliberate attempt to destroy Aboriginal peoples’ economic and political systems and their cultures and religions, and to replace them with European institutions and values. This was the strategy and policy of ‘assimila- tion’. It was, and for many Canadians still is, justified on the false grounds that Euro- pean institutions and cultural and religious values were and are believed to be superior to those of Aboriginal people.

Aboriginal people themselves may come to believe the all-pervasive notion that they are inferior. This is common among oppressed people. As Metis scholar Howard Adams puts it, many Aboriginal people “have internalized a colonized consciousness”. The results are devastating: “Once Aboriginal persons internalize the colonization processes, we feel confused and powerless....We may implode with overwhelming feelings of sadness or explode with feelings of anger. Some try to escape this state through alcohol, drugs and/or other forms of self-abuse” (Hart, 2002, p. 27).

A vicious cycle is created: the assumption of Aboriginal peoples’ cultural inferiority, initially advanced as a means to justify the European domination of North America, becomes internalized by Aboriginal people themselves; in response, many Aboriginal people lash out in self-abusive ways; such behaviour then reinforces in the minds of the non- Aboriginal majority the assumptions of Aboriginal inferiority that lie at the heart of the colonial ideology. The more:

“Aboriginal people move further into internalizing the colonization processes, the more we degrade who we are as Aboriginal people. All of these internalized processes only serve the colonizers, who then are able to sit back and say ‘see, we were right’. In colonizers’ eyes, the usurpation is justified” (Hart, 2002, p.28). It is not possible to exaggerate the importance of the internal damage and pain that many Aboriginal people carry as a consequence of the effects of colonization.

The intense poverty that grips the ‘D’ is at lems. Racism, violence against women, the heart of this problem. Approximately violence against girls. Gangs. Drug deal- 90 percent of families in the Development ers. Addiction. And poverty”. The data in have incomes below the Statistics Canada Table Three show that while poverty and low-income cutoff (LICO); most have in- related indicators have always been high comes far below the LICO. A wide range in the Development, they have grown of problems is associated with this intense, worse over the years since 1971. concentrated poverty. One person, when Two metaphors occur repeatedly in the asked about the problems of the neigh- comments of those interviewed. One is bourhood said: “Poverty, poverty, poverty, the notion of a complex web—a web of poverty, and poverty, are the major prob- poverty, racism, drugs, gangs, violence.

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 51 The other is the notion of a cycle—people scribed them as doing “tremendous caught in a cycle of inter-related problems. work”, providing “great programming for Both suggest the idea of people who are youth”, and doing “wonderful commu- trapped, immobilized, unable to escape, nity development work”. Another said destined to struggle with forces against there are “Just wonderful agencies that which they cannot win, from which they are out there”. Schools in the area were cannot extricate themselves. The result is described similarly: “the Principals and despair, resignation, anger, hopelessness, other staff at the schools are wonderful”. which then reinforce the cycle, and wrap And the School Resource Officer Program, them tighter in the web. “That’s what’s in which police officers are placed in a happening here. These people don’t have number of North End schools to build a clue that they can change. They think positive police-youth relations was de- they just have to accept what’s coming to scribed as “a really great way for children them, accept that poverty.... You need to in our schools to build trust with the po- change the mind-set”. lice, and vice versa”. The same is the case for the community beat officer whose area The problem is now deeply-entrenched in includes the ‘D’. the ‘D’. We asked those we interviewed in 2005 what initiatives seem to be work- The small core of people in the ‘D’ active ing well. Many responded negatively, in trying to build a stronger community even despairingly: “right now I don’t see was mentioned repeatedly. anything. I don’t see anything at all”; “not “There’s a small core of people who will much seems to work, there’s a lot of fail- not leave the neighbourhood for ures”; “I don’t know of any program that anything. They’re very dedicated. works well here”. They have a strong network with each Nevertheless, there are some strengths in other, and they do whatever they can the neighbourhood. There are strengths to improve their community.... they are in all neighbourhoods. Perhaps most im- incredibly dedicated”. portantly, there are many outstanding A good deal of the work being done in the community-based organizations (CBOs) ‘D’, especially but not only the youth working in and around the ‘D’, and a very work, has a strong Aboriginal cultural high proportion of staff in these CBOs are component—a necessary response to the exceptionally dedicated to the community. damage done by colonization. One youth One person said these CBOs are “just worker told us that: “It’s through our cul- wonderful organizations”. Another de- ture... hearing the traditions of the First

Table Three: Lord Selkirk Park Neighbourhood, Including the Development—Selected Indicators, 1971 and 2001 1971 2001 Population 2,115 1,345 Families 405 220 -% husband/wife 70.4% 52.3% -% lone parent 29.6% 47.7% Labour force participation rate 46.9% 35.8% Unemployment rate 16.4% 23.4% Source: Census of Canada, 1971 and 2001, data compiled by D. W. Lezubski

52 North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development Creating Opportunities for Gang Members

A four-year old program in Winnipeg’s North End uses an innovative approach to creating employment opportunities for gang members. And it’s working. Ogijiita Pimatiswin Kinamatwin (OPK) began when some gang members approached the North End Housing Project about finding work for members who were getting out of jail or wanting to leave the street. Now ten young men, mostly in their 20s, work with two trained carpenters and the project coordinator in renovating houses in their North End neighbourhoods. They learn the prac- tical skills of housing renovation; they learn about such life skills as financial management; and they learn about and practice their Aboriginal cultures.

None of these young men are returning to prison. Most are now enrolled in an introductory university course, being taken while they work. Many other young men in similar circumstances are coming to OPK and asking for the opportunity to work. These are hard-core gang members. Many have spent much of their young lives in penal institutions, locked up off and on since the age of 12 or 15 years. They are marginalized from the mainstream economy. Solutions are not easy. Why then is OPK successful? Says the project coordinator:

“We have two carpenters who are themselves ex-offenders, it’s all Aboriginal, and so there’s a good peer support ...where they have role models that have been through the same thing that they’ve been through, so our guys don’t give these carpenters a hard time because they know that they’ve walked the same path as them....A lot of the people are from the area, have experienced the same things they have, the poverty, oppression, unemployment, all those things”.

But maybe the program is too expensive? The project coordinator says not: “Not if you look at it in terms of how much it costs to lock somebody up. You have to look at how much it costs to lock somebody up, and if they’re with a partner, they go on welfare, how much it costs the Province to pay for the family. Then you have to look at marriage break-up, you have to look at addictions, all these things that come about....I think the program is cheap in relation to all of that”.

Nations people and the spiritual path, tions, do the problems in the ‘D’ seem so that’s how we’re going to heal the whole deeply entrenched, so intractable? community”. Many young people re- The answer—as is the case with public spond very well to being introduced to a housing projects elsewhere in North knowledge of their culture. Parents may America—is that the ‘D’ is characterized as well. An elder told us that: “I’ve had by concentrated poverty, and is what one kids come over from the projects, you respondent accurately called an “artificial know, Lord Selkirk, and after about three community”. Most people living in the ‘D’ or four sweats their Moms would start have not chosen to move there: they have coming with them” been placed there by ‘the system’—by Why then, with such dedicated people some agency in the social service sys- and strong community-based organiza- tem—because their lives are particularly

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 53 troubled. One respondent said: “I think they’re gone, and you start from scratch it’s a real problem when people at the low- again, so it’s one step forward, two steps est point in their lives are forced to live to- back a lot of the time.” gether in a very small area.” And for those What is the solution? Is there a solution? in the ‘D’ who do manage to get their lives together, they quickly leave: “those indi- Intense community development and viduals, when they get their life back to- community organizing work needs to take gether, their vision is not to stay in that place in the ‘D’. A major part of the prob- community, their long-term goal is to lem in the ‘D’ is that residents are not en- move out and to move to a place where gaged, are not involved in building solu- their children will benefit from the advan- tions to their own problems. Many of the tages of living in a different community”. community organizations are doing wonderful and necessary work, but not much The result is that a disproportionate of it is old-fashioned, face-to-face commu- number of those who are there at any nity organizing, and that is what is needed given time are people in trouble: “once now. One respondent said: “It literally they’re doing better they leave, and are means going door-to-door and saying, replaced by other people who are also ‘can I come in for a cup of tea’”, and get- struggling, and there’s never anybody ting to know people personally. Another there for any length [of time] who’s suc- said: “Building relationships is key.... cessful”. The problems of poverty—the working one-on-one with people and get- interconnected web or cycle of prob- ting to know the neighbourhood and the lems—which are fairly highly concen- residents is a huge first step”. trated in the inner city generally, are in- tensely concentrated in the ‘D’. As one re- It is likely that most of the community spondent said: “If you’ve got a group of leaders identified in this way will be people who don’t have a vested interest women. As one person said: “I see women in the community, do not have a long-term doing it. Because women are the leaders commitment, then how do you build a of our community. Go to any organization, neighbourhood out of that?” most of the leaders are women”.

Another added: “They tend to get lumped In addition, a real solution to the problems in this neighbourhood because, really, of the ‘D’ has to be holistic and long-term. there’s no place else for them to go”. This is precisely what the North End There’s no place to go because of the con- Community Renewal Corporation tinued shortage—a shortage that has (NECRC) is attempting to implement: a th plagued the area throughout the 20 cen- holistic, ten-year effort to turn around the tury—of adequate low-income rental Development. This means ensuring that housing. The Development, like public all the agencies and CBOs working in and housing almost everywhere, has become around the ‘D’ organize their work jointly, —for reasons having to do with broader as part of a common, long-term plan. As socio-economic forces—‘housing of last one person interviewed put it, we need resort’. When tenants in the ‘D’ get things “a key stakeholders’ multi-year plan to together they leave, “so that the tran- support community-based initiatives”. siency in that neighbourhood is really This is a process now well underway, as high... you’ll get a good organization to- we will show below. gether, a group of residents that are making good things happen, and then peo- And the solution has to be long-term. Over ple move out of the neighbourhood and and over again we were told that a major

54 North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development problem in the ‘D’ is the prevalence of “It’s all well and good for govern- short-term funding for pilot projects. This ment to say, well, put a plan to- does not work. In fact, it makes matters gether and develop a program and worse. People gradually become in- we’ll provide some funding but it’s volved with a project, and begin to work not going to be long-term.... And to make change; then the funding is ter- you know, all levels of government minated and the project is over. Getting do this—to a community that’s them involved the next time is that much having a hard time just making it more difficult: through the day without a crisis in their homes. And I’m not overstat- “You’re not going to do it in two years, ing it. I think I’m understating it”. and you’re not going to do it in three, it’s going to take a long, long time, But this reliance upon short-term fund- you have to bring those people out... ing, this failure to provide long-term you got to develop a relationship with funding over a sustained period of time, them, they’ve got to start to feel a is short-sighted. sense of safety with you. It takes a “The government has got to quit play- long time”. ing games with organizations, whether One person said: “Sometimes when it’s mine or any other organization out you’ve been let down and rejected by so there trying... to bring programming to many people in your life, it takes a long the Aboriginal communities. They save time before you build trust in people, you in the long run... because if they don’t know.” Another added, referring specifi- pay now they’re going to be paying cally to youth programs that come and go: later.... whether it’s on welfare, in the “they see that, and that stuff goes on in courts, prison, hospitals”. their own lives and their homes”, and so There is frustration that governments are just adds to the sense of abandonment, not dealing with inner city problems seri- and the lack of stability in their lives. He ously. One woman told us that govern- emphasized repeatedly the need for con- ments have to stop demanding that inner sistency over time, as opposed to the cur- city programs become ‘sustainable’. Most rent emphasis on short-term funding. cannot become sustainable, ever, and it is Said another: “The funding people get is the role of government to use our collec- so short term. What’s happening in the tively-generated tax dollars to solve the inner city didn’t happen over night, it took kinds of problems facing the inner city many, many years”. “Lots of starts and generally, and Lord Selkirk Park particu- stops. So nothing, again, long-term”. Over larly. Another woman said: “If we were and over we were told, in very frustrated in the real world of real money and real tones, that a long-term commitment to the politicians who cared they would say, OK, neighbourhood is needed. let’s set something up”. This has to do in part with how governments approach the community-based b. Evidence that Things were work being done in the inner city. Gov- Good at the Beginning. ernments are the primary funders, and the frequently-expressed view is that they The Development was not always so trou- are too committed to small, disjointed, bled. There is evidence that tenants were short-term projects, as opposed to holis- relatively happy in the early years. This is tic and longer-term strategies. consistent with what we found in large

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 55 American public housing projects, and in Some of the problems existing at the time Toronto’s Regent Park. About Burrows- are familiar today. As early as 1970 the Keewatin, for example, Val Werier re- Lord Selkirk Park Tenants’ Association ported in 1969 that: (LSPTA) was calling for increased police protection, “because as things stand now “Burrows-Keewatin, the first new rental it is just not safe to go outdoors after night- housing development in Winnipeg, is fall. We like living here, inside. But out- four years old this week.... A stranger side we’re just like ants that can be would not know it as public housing crushed at will” (WT, Nov. 20, 1970). for it appears as an attractive develop- Gangs were active in the area even then. ment with buildings of dark red brick “The local junior high school, Aberdeen and white stucco, green lawns and [now Niji Mahkwa, the Aboriginal el- flowers.... More than half of the 165 ementary school], was described by some tenants have gardens in their front as a ‘high school for delinquents’ because yards.... The development has been a of [the] many gangs in the area. Young- tremendous step forward in the provi- sters who don’t join gangs are often beaten sion of good housing for 900 people up” (WT, March 7, 1970). It appears that who would otherwise be living in the gang problem preceded the construc- mean crowded quarters.... For most tion of the Development. people in Burrows-Keewatin, there is no question that public housing has Similarly, people were concerned even done great things” (WT, Oct. 4, 1967. then about the relative lack of social fa- See also WT, Feb. 8, 1969). cilities. The LSPTA charged that “police protection and recreational facilities in the A major story about Lord Selkirk Park in area are sadly lacking” (WT, May 12, the Tribune in 1970 opened by saying: “No- 1971). The Director of the Peoples’ Oppor- body this reporter spoke to in a series of tunity Services said early in 1970 that: “A interviews gave complete praise to the project of this kind was meant to meet a project; nor did anyone condemn it out- social need, but the social component of right”. Referring to a tenant who offered the need was not included in the plan- some complaints, the reporter said: “Still, ning” (WT, March 7, 1970). Yauk (1973) he says, the development is much better made the same case, as shown earlier. The than low rent housing generally available historical pattern in the North End, as seen on the open market”. The reporter de- earlier, was that the area was starved of scribed the housing units by saying that public funding for social and recreational “the new units are quite like suburban amenities. That did not change with the town houses”, and concluded the long creation of the Development. The quality report with the observation that: “Any of the housing was an improvement, most praise generally comes for the housing it- tenants said, but the social problems of the self. People often criticize, but then quickly neighbourhood remained, and continued add some details on the bad conditions of to be largely ignored. their old housing, and then with some relief talk about the promptness of re- The implicit assumption driving govern- pairs” (WT, March 7, 1970). On balance, ments’ approach to the Development ap- and despite some specific problems, ten- pears to have been—as with 19th century ants felt positively about living in the De- Victorian-era ‘environmental determin- velopment in 1970. ism’—that the construction of new hous-

56 North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development ing would, by itself, solve deep-seated Keewatin, feels, with justice, that a higher social problems, and thus there was no proportion of welfare or problem families need for any expenditure beyond the cost would turn the project into a slum”. of the housing itself. There was a waiting list of people want- Further, and precisely as was the case in ing to get into the Development in 1970. large public housing projects in the USA The official list was 700 names. A social and at Regent Park in Toronto, there were worker with the welfare department said specific policies in place in the Develop- he had 50 families in the private rental ment’s early years that created a demo- market in need of better housing, “if only graphically and socio-economically differ- something better presented itself”. A ent group of tenants than those who now community development worker with occupy the Development. For example, Peoples Opportunity Services said the according to the Manager of Lord Selkirk real waiting list was closer to 3000, be- Park Housing Development, the policy in cause “lots of people who need its accom- 1970 was to limit the number of tenants modation haven’t bothered to apply” on social assistance to 25 percent of the (WT, March 7, 1970). total number (WT, March 7, 1970). Simi- In short, Lord Selkirk Park was meeting a larly, there were restrictions on who could real need in an area historically short of be admitted to the Development: adequate, low-income rental housing, and “To protect itself, the housing authority tenants lucky enough to get in were gen- sends workers to the homes of pro- erally satisfied with their housing. Their spective tenants (there’s a waiting list complaints were about gangs and violence of 700) to look at the housekeeping, to in the area—problems which appear to see standards are high enough and have pre-dated the creation of the Devel- that the residents would be unlikely to opment—and a relative lack of social fa- damage housing. The authority also cilities, also a problem with a long history does a credit check or else ‘we’d get in the North End. some nuts who never pay any bill’” The general satisfaction with public hous- (WT, March 7, 1970). ing in the early years can also be seen at People renting in the ‘D’ could be “thrown Burrows-Keewatin, whose construction out for bad housekeeping or causing dis- preceded Lord Selkirk Park. The manager turbances” (WT, March 7, 1970). These are of both the Lord Selkirk Park and Bur- the measures adopted in the early years rows-Keewatin developments said about of public housing throughout North the latter that when that development was America, with the result that public hous- first discussed, there was almost “a little ing at that time was home primarily to revolution” by area residents, “ a ‘there low-income working families. goes the neighbourhood’ syndrome. But by now, he said, the barriers have been Part of the reason for the positive change, broken. Grocers are happy with the addi- Robertson argues, is that “many poor tional business, children living in the pub- families—the hard-core poor—have been lic housing are indistinguishable in school kept out. These are the people with most from children living in other homes in the of the problems.... Only 42 of the 165 fami- area” (WT, March 7, 1970). lies receive welfare. This is maximum— no more than one-quarter of the popula- A study of Burrows-Keewatin by Profes- tion can be on welfare. The Winnipeg sor William Morrison in 1967 found that Housing Authority, which runs Burrows- the sample of tenants that he interviewed Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 57 were happy with their new housing. Ap- with children, could not get in. Council- proximately 75 percent “said that they lor Joe Zuken continued to make this case. would recommend friends to move out “Alderman Zuken says the need for where they were living. This can only be housing probably runs at 5000 units interpreted as a positive vote of confi- right now, and that the total of 580 dence in the renewal project” (Morrison, units in Lord Selkirk Park and Bur- 1967, p. 72). Morrison also found that, to rows-Keewatin is lower than the the extent that his sample accurately re- number of houses that have deterio- flected the total composition of the public rated while they have been built” (WT, housing development, the tenants were March 7, 1970). overwhelmingly of British and Western European origin. Only 17 percent were Zuken is reported to have said: “There is Aboriginal (Morrison, 1967, p. 9). He con- a gap, almost a chasm between what cluded, consistent with the later work of could or should be done and what is be- Yauk (1973), that most of those who ing done”. He added that private land- moved into Burrows-Keewatin had not lords were being especially hard on low- moved from the Salter-Jarvis area. The income people with children. Many pri- people living in Burrows-Keewatin at the vately-owned blocks did not allow chil- time of his study, Morrison said, “cannot dren, leading Zuken to say: “There’s a war be considered as representative of the peo- on kids going on, as though kids were a ple who were living in Census Tract 10 crime” (WT, March 7, 1970). These pres- before the redevelopment program be- sures, created by the failure of the private gan” (Morrison, 1967, p. 11). for-profit rental housing market, led eventually to a relaxation of the restrictions The demographic and socio-economic originally placed on admission to public composition of tenants in Lord Selkirk housing developments. As these restric- Park changed over the years consistent tions were relaxed, more of those most in with the case in large public housing need were admitted to Lord Selkirk Park. projects in the USA and elsewhere in It eventually became, as was the case else- Canada, and for similar reasons. The origi- where, ‘housing of last resort’. This was nal limits on the numbers of tenants on never the intent for Lord Selkirk Park, social assistance, and the screening to en- nor for any public housing. As Tom Yauk sure that prospective tenants met certain (interview, March 30, 2005) has put it: standards, were modified over the years, “Nobody dreamed that it would be 100 and these changes are likely to have been percent social assistance recipients”. made for the most well-intentioned of rea- And yet that is close to what it became, sons. For example, in 1970 the Director of because there was no other place for Peoples Opportunities Services said: “The people in the greatest need. people who could benefit most from public housing are the ones who often find it From there being a limit of 25 percent on hardest to get into it, because of the house- social assistance recipients in Lord Selkirk keeping provisions” (WT, March 7, 1970), Park at the outset, the pressure to meet and because of the limits on welfare cases. the real housing needs of those most in There was a severe shortage of low-in- need led to changes in policy. The 25 per- come rental housing. There were many cent limit was lifted. Requirements re- people in great need. But many of those specting housekeeping were removed. in the greatest need, particularly those The Development became ‘housing of last

58 North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development resort’, the place where those at the low- Development did not create these prob- est point in their lives were concentrated. lems; broader socio-economic forces did. The “most difficult cases were put in Lord The Development has been left to deal Selkirk Park”, and social workers would with the worst effects of these forces. To say to ‘troublesome’ clients, by way of a solve the resulting problems will require threat, “how would you like to live in Lord long-term public investment. Selkirk Park?” (Yauk, March 30, 2005). The resulting concentration of poverty, d. What Has Been and of particularly complex cases of pov- Happening Lately? erty, has severely adverse effects. The problem is not public housing. The prob- Beginning in the late 1990s there has been lem is that the private for-profit rental a renewed interest in the Lord Selkirk Park market does not come close to meeting the Housing Development. Efforts have been needs of low-income people, whose num- made to encourage resident involvement bers—for reasons having to do with broad and to increase the extent to which organi- socio-economic forces—have grown over zations and agencies active in the neigh- the past 25 years. As the Development bourhood work together. Gains have been became home to those in most difficulty, made. A social infrastructure that meets to large numbers of people on social as- the expressed needs of residents of the sistance, problems began to emerge. The Development is systematically being con- seeds of those problems were there from structed. This is something that should the start—gangs were a presence in the have been a part of the Development from neighbourhood in 1970, and probably ear- the beginning, but as we have seen, has lier. By the 1980s, however, the situation not. The history of the North End through- th in the Development had become so bad out the 20 century has included a severe that “people just didn’t want to live there under-investment in social infrastructure, anymore”, and by the 1990s the ‘D’ was and that problem is now, finally and be- 50 percent vacant (Yauk, March 30, 2005). latedly, being tackled effectively in the Because Manitoba Housing gave priority Development. There is a long way to go for housing to those women leaving vio- yet, but a beginning is being made. lent relationships, they found homes in In September, 1997, a Lord Selkirk Neigh- Lord Selkirk Park, and in the mid-1990s bourhood Council was established for the social service agencies were moved into purpose of developing a strategic plan for the neighbourhood in large numbers the neighbourhood that would identify is- (Yauk, Mar. 30, 2005). sues, objectives, action steps, resources To argue that the Development itself is required and potential projects. The Lord the cause of the problems described Selkirk Neighbourhood Council was a 13- above is to confuse cause and effect. The member committee of homeowners and Development has represented affordable tenants elected at a series of public meet- rental housing for those in need, when ings. Working with City of Winnipeg and the demand for such housing far out- Winnipeg Development Agreement stripped the supply. With the best of in- (WDA) staff, and funded by the WDA, the tentions, the doors of the Development Neighbourhood Council produced a stra- were opened to those in the greatest tegic plan through a process of public con- need, thus concentrating poverty—and sultation and public meetings in the often the most complex cases of pov- neighbourhood. The strategic plan was erty—in one small geographic area. The adopted by the Lord Selkirk Neighbour-

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 59 hood Council at a meeting held June 30, ful community economic development 1998, and by City Council July 22, 1998 groups is that they take the form of ‘de- (City of Winnipeg, July, 1998). velopment systems’ as contrasted to ‘projects’”. The non-profit organization is Two themes were consistently expressed community-based, with a 16-member throughout the process leading to the crea- Board of Directors comprised of a broad tion of the strategic plan. One was that range of community representatives— everyone in the neighbourhood—resi- business, residents, Aboriginal organiza- dents, tenants, businesses, governments, tions, community service organizations, community-based organizations—had to religious and labour organizations. The work in partnership rather than in isola- NECRC has played a central role in efforts tion if the revitalization process was to be to revitalize Selkirk Avenue, once the successful. The second was that residents thriving commercial heart of the historic had to be involved in the decision-mak- North End, but in recent years home to ing process, in a fashion consistent with large numbers of boarded-up buildings. the principles of community develop- Selkirk Ave is now slowly but definitely ment. A key feature of the strategic plan beginning to turn around, thanks in no was a proposal to develop a Neighbour- small measure to the efforts of NECRC. hood Resource Centre on the Develop- The community development corporation ment site. The strategy that arose from has also played a central role in creating the exercise was that “the program will residents’ associations in several North be a community development project, End neighbourhoods, increasing resident which capitalizes on partnership in the involvement in those neighbourhoods, coordination of resources using a Neigh- promoting employment, housing and bourhood Resource Centre model of business development in the North End, service delivery” (City of Winnipeg, July, and encouraging service delivery organi- 1998, p. 3). zations to work more closely together. Its At about the same time, the North End creation in 1998, with its holistic and Community Renewal Corporation was grassroots philosophy, fit very well with being established. The North End Com- the ideas expressed in the Revitalization munity Renewal Corporation (NECRC) is Strategy, and NECRC would soon become a non-profit community development cor- the lead organization in trying to promote poration established in 1998 by a coalition and coordinate the revitalization process of inner city community-based organiza- in the Development. tions. The NECRC has its headquarters on Selkirk Avenue, with a mandate to serve In October, 2002, the NECRC was success- the North End community from the CPR ful in applying for four month funding tracks to Carruthers Avenue, and from from the provincial government’s Neigh- McPhillips Street to the Red River. Now a bourhoods Alive! Program “to support the $1.2 million per year operation with a staff creation of a community revitalization of 20, the NECRC was established in or- strategy in the Lord Selkirk Park commu- der to move efforts to revitalize the North nity” (NECRC, April 25, 2003). NECRC End beyond a host of isolated programs, hired a Community Planning Facilitator to a more systematic and comprehensive to build on the 1998 Revitalization Strat- approach. The NECRC adheres to the Ca- egy and to get the process moving. The nadian Community Economic Develop- main difficulty faced was that the efforts ment Network (CCED-Net) philosophy of the 30 or more agencies working in the that “what distinguishes the most success- neighbourhood (for a partial list of these,

60 North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development A Partial List of Organizations Working in and Around the Development

Wahbung Abinoonjiiag Ndaawin Ndinawemaaganag Endaawaad Indian and Metis Friendship Centre Kekinan Centre Mount Carmel Clinic Aikens Street Community Health Centre Manitoba Housing Authority Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre Turtle Island Neighbourhood Centre Native Women’s Transition Centre North End Women’s Resource Centre David Livingstone School R. B. Russell Vocational High School Anne Ross Day Nursery Winnipeg Boys and Girls Club CEDA Sage House Neechi Foods Lord Selkirk Park Aboriginal Women’s Group Youth Alliance Program see p. 61) were not well coordinated. The cise in which participants identify goals problem was described as a “lack of com- and means of reaching those goals. This munication, coordination, and partner- PATH exercise asked: “What is the ship between agencies, organizations and ‘Dream’ for the Lord Selkirk Park commu- programs; duplication of services and re- nity” (NECRC, Feb. 26, 2003). Many goals sources; competition for similar funding were identified during the process, includ- resources and sources” (NECRC, April 25, ing, for example: more organized sports 2003). However, the Community Planning programs for children and youth; “a cur- Facilitator was successful in creating what few for kids and youth”; “more education/ would become the Lord Selkirk Park Com- training programs and jobs for all ages”. munity Advisory Committee, comprised Among the specific goals identified to be of representatives of most of these agen- achieved within one year were the crea- cies plus some tenants. He also worked tion of a volunteer base of 40 people, the with the Lord Selkirk Tenants’ Associa- production of a monthly community tion, and organized a large and well-at- newsletter, the creation of a Youth Board tended community consultation process. (which did meet for the first time in Sep- The challenges were formidable: “The tember, 2003), and the re-establishment of majority of these challenges stemmed a daycare facility at the Turtle Island Rec- from the sheer number of agencies, or- reation Centre (NECRC, Feb. 26, 2003). ganizations and programs contained The community was beginning to become within the Lord Selkirk Park neighbour- engaged in thinking about building a bet- hood” (NECRC, April 25, 2003). ter future, but the direction to be taken was still somewhat scattered, and there was a An outcome of the first four months of long way to go yet. work in Lord Selkirk Park was a community consultation in February, 2003, that In May, 2003, the NECRC successfully included 26 neighbourhood residents and applied for another two years of funding representatives of 10 agencies and organi- from Neighbourhoods Alive! to enable zations. A PATH process was used. PATH them to continue work in the Lord Selkirk stands for Planning Alternative Tomor- Park neighbourhood. Further progress rows with Hope, and is a planning exer- was made. Agencies “noted the high de-

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 61 gree of collaboration that is emerging and Neighbourhood Revitalization Strategy beginning to produce positive neighbour- that was created in 1998 through project hood effects”; the role of the Lord Selkirk funding from the Winnipeg Development Park Project Coordinator, originally called Agreement” (NECRC, Nov., 2004, p. 10). the Community Planning Facilitator, was What NECRC was aiming to do was to strongly supported as a necessary part of assemble the long-term funding that the process as someone “who oversees would enable them to work in the neigh- neighbourhood activities, increases bourhood consistently over a ten year pe- awareness, and attempts to coordinate the riod. The problems of the Development ‘big picture’ of neighbourhood renewal”; and surrounding neighbourhood are not a new Citizens on Patrol Program (COPP) susceptible to a ‘quick fix’. In their Com- was established, and it was seen as “bol- prehensive Community Initiative Interim stering the perception of safety in the Report for the period from May to Septem- neighbourhood, and benefitting the com- ber, 2005, the NECRC reported that a Re- munity at large”; and unanimous support source Centre was almost ready to go—it from the agencies in the community was is now operational as of January, 2006— expressed “for a centralized and complete and that steps were being taken to make employment service agency in the neigh- it somewhat easier to evict tenants around bourhood” (NECRC, Feb, 2004). A year drug use issues, and to revise intake pro- later, in May 2004, it was reported that the cedures for the Development. Lord Selkirk Park Community Advisory A great deal has been achieved in the Committee, which was officially formed Development since 1998. Much of what in April, 2004, was considering the estab- has been achieved is not yet visible, even lishment of a Lord Selkirk Park Tenant though it has taken very considerable ef- Resource Centre (NECRC, May 31, 2004). fort. There is now a viable Lord Selkirk In November, 2004, the NECRC success- Park Community Advisory Committee fully applied to the National Crime Pre- that has had the effect of coordinating vention Centre and Neighbourhoods service provision. There is a tenant Re- Alive! for funding for a Comprehensive source Centre that is staffed and has of- Community Initiative (CCI) in the neigh- fice space in the Development. Much of bourhood. This initiative fit with the no- the groundwork has now been laid for tion that social programs and initiatives the development of the social infrastruc- can contribute significantly to a reduction ture that can create new opportunities of crime. The NECRC stated that “the for residents of the ‘D’, and provide the overall intent of the CCI is to implement supports to enable them to realize those the recommendations contained in the opportunities.

62 North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development Part Five: Conclusions

Large public housing developments have home not of low-income working families, acquired a bad reputation. The conclusion with a minority of tenants on social as- that has been reached by most is that large sistance, but of families on social assist- public housing developments must be ance, with a minority of tenants in the torn down and replaced with mixed-in- workforce. Eventually, public housing come housing because they are so deeply projects become home to concentrated, flawed that they can no longer be made racialized poverty, and home also to all of to work. That is now happening all across the problems associated with concen- North America. trated and racialized poverty. This thinking would be a mistake if ap- The still broader level of analysis leads to plied to Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park a consideration of what caused these con- Housing Development. The Development centrations of racialized poverty. This pa- does not need to be torn down—doing so, per has argued that because public hous- the evidence makes clear, would simply ing was linked to ‘slum’ removal, it was aggravate an already severe shortage of located in inner cities. Inner cities through- low-income rental housing. What is more, out North America suffered first from the this paper has argued, the problem is not process of suburbanization, which re- public housing as such. Public housing sulted in very large numbers of those who has come to be blamed for a problem for could afford to do so moving to the sub- which it is not the cause. urbs, and taking many businesses with them, thus ‘hollowing out’ the inner city The cause of the problems with which and leaving behind those least able to public housing is associated is broader move. This was followed by the dramatic than public housing itself. This can be seen economic restructuring of the past 30 by thinking in terms of two levels of analy- years and more, which included a de-in- sis. First, public housing has become dustrialization which removed from in- ‘housing of last resort’, concentrating large ner cities the very kinds of decently-paid numbers of the poorest of the poor. To the jobs that would otherwise have enabled extent that this is the case, the problems many of those now among the poor to pull are caused by the concentration of pov- themselves out of poverty. erty—the effects of which have been well- described (Wilson, 1987; 1996)—not by In Winnipeg, at the front end of this con- public housing. When its tenants were tinent-wide process, beginning in the comprised of large numbers of low-in- early 1960s, Aboriginal people began come working families, as was the case slowly at first, and then in waves, to move when large public housing projects were to the city. Most were unprepared for first built—public housing was seen by its modern urban life, having lived in rural tenants as a god-send compared to their and often remote communities without previous housing. This was the case in the adequate educational opportunities and USA, at Regent Park in Toronto, and at without much experience in the paid la- Burrows-Keewatin and Lord Selkirk Park bour force, and having been subjected to in Winnipeg. However, a process began, the damage of colonization, and faced the pattern of which is everywhere the with unrelenting discrimination and rac- same, by which changes in policy resulted ism upon their arrival in the city. They in public housing projects becoming the congregated where housing was least ex-

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 63 pensive—in the inner city. The combina- ated by Eastern European and Jewish tion of their lack of education and experi- workers of the North End, they were re- ence, the harm caused by colonization, the ferred to disparagingly as ‘hunkies’, disappearance of well-paid jobs, and the ‘bohunks’, ‘polacks’ and more, and the discrimination and racism that they faced, North End was starved of the public re- led to high rates of poverty and associated sources needed to improve the housing problems, which were made the worse by stock and life chances of its residents. the continued inadequacy of public in- When the combination of post-war vestment aimed at poverty alleviation, an suburbanization and the relaxing of dis- inadequacy accentuated by the public crimination directed at Eastern Europeans funding cutbacks that started in earnest and Jews made relocation possible, vast in the late 1970s-early 1980s in response numbers of those most able to do so left to the changing global economy. the North End for the suburbs. The already inadequate housing deteriorated It is these broader issues—the changes in further. Much was bought up by slum the global economy and its de-industrial- landlords uninterested in maintenance izing effects, the cutbacks in public spend- and repairs. Those people in the worst fi- ing, the severe disadvantages faced by a nancial circumstances and with the fewest growing urban Aboriginal population— economic prospects congregated where that led to the concentration of racialized cheap housing was most readily available. poverty in Winnipeg’s inner city, just as it The worst of these areas was around Jarvis led to concentrated racialized poverty and Ave off Main Street, and this area—the its associated problems in large urban cen- Salter-Jarvis area—became home to Win- tres throughout North America. Public nipeg’s first urban renewal project. housing, located as it was in the inner city, was in effect asked to respond to the dam- From the outset there were problems. age created by these broader forces. And Many good houses were knocked down; so public housing became ‘housing of last the still healthy part of the neighbourhood resort’ for those most adversely affected was bulldozed; most of those relocated by the dramatic changes of the late 20th did not experience improved housing; century. To conclude from all of this that and from the beginning, the new Devel- public housing is the problem is to con- opment was starved of the social spend- fuse cause and effect. ing that was needed to make it a success, just as had always been the case in the In Winnipeg, the story of the Lord Selkirk North End. Despite this, those who first Park Housing Development has to be seen located in the Lord Selkirk Park Housing in the context of the broad history of Win- Development, and in Burrows-Keewatin, nipeg’s North End. The North End was were happy with their new accommoda- the original home of the British and espe- tions. When the deterioration set in, it was cially the Eastern European working class not because of public housing as such; it who fueled the great economic boom of was because of broader forces. the early 20th century. They located in the North End where the jobs then were, in This broadly comparative, historical small, cheaply-built housing located on analysis is important now for several rea- cramped lots built by developers looking sons. First, it makes clear that—contrary to make a fast profit. The North End and to what has been argued by those in its residents were stigmatized by the city’s power throughout North America—pub- Anglo majority and Anglo ruling class. lic housing is not the problem. The prob- Despite the rich and vibrant culture cre- lem is the broader socio-economic forces, 64 North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development in the face of which public housing ought promotes and supports tenants’ involve- to be seen as part of the solution. It is part ment, and builds their capacities and their of the solution because, given adequate self-confidence and self-esteem. Third, it social supports, it can provide good qual- makes clear that this is a path now being ity low-income rental housing at a time embarked upon in the Development, led when that is in perilously short supply. by the North End Community Renewal Second, it makes clear that the problems Corporation and the newly-established seen to be associated with public housing Lord Selkirk Park Resource Centre. The have deep roots that go far back in time, work done to date is no guarantee of fu- and thus will not be solved quickly. Any ture success. Much hard work remains. solution in Lord Selkirk Park must of ne- But finally, after decades of neglect, we are cessity be a long-term solution, one that moving in a positive direction.

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 65 Part Six: Recommendations

The recommendations advanced below asset. It represents a significant number arise directly out of the findings of this of affordable rental housing units at a time study. They are not intended to displace when and in a place where the demand the preferences expressed by the tenants for such housing far outstrips the supply. of the Lord Selkirk Park Housing Devel- The Development is an asset that can be opment. Those preferences should be the built upon, in an asset-based community basis of a strategy to revitalize the De- development fashion. velopment. However, we can learn from the lessons of history, and from the ex- 2. Focus on Developing the Social perience elsewhere, and what follows Infrastructure in and Around draws on this paper’s historical and com- the Development, as the North parative analysis of public housing in End Community Renewal Cor- North America. poration Has Begun To Do

The positive side of the HOPE VI pro- 1. Do Not Tear Down nor Even grams that have been implemented in Physically Redesign the large US public housing projects, and at Development Toronto’s Regent Park, is the development The approach that has been adopted in of a social infrastructure designed to cre- the USA and at Toronto’s Regent Park is ate new opportunities for tenants, and to to tear down large public housing support them in seizing those opportuni- projects and replace them with mixed- ties. This is the direction that the North income housing. The result in most End Community Renewal Corporation is cases—although it remains to be seen taking at Lord Selkirk Park, and it is the whether this will be the case at Regent appropriate direction to take. Park—is a net loss of low-income rental The problem with the large public hous- housing units. Winnipeg cannot afford to ing projects, this paper has argued, is not lose low-income rental housing. Further, their design. It is the fact that public hous- this paper has argued that the problem ing has become the place where the very with public housing is not the design of poor are physically concentrated, and it the public housing developments. The is the concentration of poverty that is the problem is not public housing as such. problem. This needs to be addressed di- So tearing down or redesigning Lord Sel- rectly. A large part of doing so is engag- kirk Park would not only be likely to re- ing tenants, in community development sult in a net loss of much-needed low- fashion, in solving their own problems, income rental housing; it also would not and providing them with the supports get at the cause of the problem. The that they need to solve those problems. amount of public money that would have This is exactly what the NECRC has be- to be spent if the Development were to gun to do, by laying the foundations for be torn down and redesigned is large, the creation of the social infrastructure and could be much better spent. that will enable residents of the Develop- The better approach is to view the Lord ment to be actively engaged in solving Selkirk Park Housing Development as an their own problems.

66 North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development Throughout the 20th century we have not gaged in a process of learning—both for- invested in the social infrastructure of mal and informal learning. Winnipeg’s North End to the extent that was needed. We did not invest in the so- ‘Learning’ includes formal education— cial infrastructure of the Development the kinds of supports for high school edu- when it was built, and have not done so cation that we have seen in Toronto’s Re- since. Residents of the North End, and gent Park; the kinds of Aboriginal adult tenants of the Development, have been education strategies developed in Winni- largely left to their own devices. The im- peg at the Urban Circle Training Centre; plicit assumption was the 19th century the innovative Teaching Assistant pro- Victorian notion—generally referred to as gram recently put in place in Winnipeg’s ‘environmental determinism’—that the Centennial neighbourhood; the kinds of problems of ‘slums’ could be solved sim- job training put in place at Chicago’s ply by building new housing. We know Cabrini-Green, in association with that more is needed. We know that mar- Walgreen’s, for example—and informal ginalized, low-income people need social education—teaching children and youth supports to enable them to realize their about their Aboriginal cultures, for exam- human potential. ple, or developing strategies similar to OPK, described above (p. 53), to enable young people to exit gangs when they are 3. Create a More Focused, and ready to do so. Everything that is done in More Clear, Sense of Direction the Development can be oriented around For The Work Now Being Done the idea of a ‘learning community’. in the Development

Tenants in the Development have been 4. Revise the Process by Which consulted on numerous occasions about People are Admitted to the what they see as the problems and the Development solutions. This is what should have happened. Tenants and service providers Public housing across North America, in- have offered a great many observations cluding Lord Selkirk Park, has become and recommendations that are useful. over the last 40 years ‘housing of last resort’ for those in the greatest need. This What is needed now is a focus, a clear was not the original intention for public sense of direction. The NECRC realizes housing. It has created many problems, this, having identified in an April, 2003, because it has led to the concentration of review of their work in the Development, poverty, and in particular the concentra- “the need for a specific focus and/or clear tion of individuals and families in great- objectives regarding programing require- est distress. ments”, and “the need to prioritize issues to be concerned and addressed”. Admissions policy should be changed to admit those who, while still poor and in One possibility is to identify the Develop- need of low-rental housing, are able and ment as a ‘learning community’, one in prepared to take advantage of the oppor- which a myriad of opportunities are cre- tunities created by living in a ‘learning ated and supports are provided to enable community’. This is not a call for HOPE adults, youth and children to become en- VI-style mixed-income housing and the

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 67 admission of higher-income individuals 6. Involve Employers in the and families. Potential tenants should be Employment Development screened, not for the size or source of Program their incomes nor the quality of their There is a growing body of literature housekeeping, but for their willingness pointing to the importance of involving and perceived ability to take advantage potential employers directly in employ- of the opportunities created by a ‘learn- ment development programs. Employ- ing community’. ers can identify the training that they The result would be that the Develop- consider necessary for potential employment, with its strong social infrastructure ees, and can participate in designing and its range of learning opportunities and even delivering that training. The and supports, would become a place that result is a direct ‘pipeline’ from training low-income people want to live, rather to employment. than a place that people want to leave. As we have seen, such a program has been People who want to live in the Develop- developed at Cabrini-Green, one of Chi- ment, and want to take advantage of the cago’s largest and most notorious public opportunities and supports available housing projects, and it has been putting there, would create an engaged and vi- tenants into jobs. Throughout the USA, brant community. innovative employment development The Development would become a dem- strategies have been tried and evaluated onstration of what is possible when peo- over the past 10 years. What works best is ple—no matter how poor and distressed now much better understood. And one of they may be—who want to improve their the clearest and most important findings circumstances and their community are is that rather than focus only and entirely afforded the opportunities and the sup- on the ‘supply’ side of the employment ports to do so. development equation—ie., assisting low- income people in looking for and prepar- ing for a job—it is important to work also 5. Maintain the Cap on Rents So on the ‘demand’ side, by involving em- That People Who Begin to ployers in need of employees (Loewen, Earn Good Incomes are Silver et al, 2005). not Induced to Leave This approach would mean scaling up The cap or ceiling on the rent that can and modifying the current, fledgling em- be paid for housing in the Development ployment development program at the has the effect of keeping at least some Development. It is essential that Lord Sel- of those people who benefit from the op- kirk Park be a ‘learning community’ in portunities and supports in Lord Selkirk which there are direct, tangible results Park as tenants of the Development. It attached to tenants’ learning. should be maintained. The result will, in time, be the creation of a mixed-income development—one in which a sig- 7. Create Childcare Spaces For nificant proportion of those living there All Those Participating in the are employed in the labour force. In this ‘Learning Community’. way the concentration of poverty will One of the most important supports in a gradually be broken down. ‘learning community’ is the provision of

68 North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development adequate and affordable childcare to en- 9. Build More Public Housing In able parents to take advantage of oppor- Order to Increase the Supply of tunities. A childcare centre could also cre- Low-Income Rental Units ate opportunities for the development of Large, 1960s-style public housing units parenting skills, for volunteering, and for have acquired a negative reputation in training and employment. recent decades. This paper has attempted to offer explanations for that reputation. 8. Develop Strategies Specifically The problem, the paper has argued, is not Aimed at Improving Safety with public housing as such. Indeed, we Much of what has been described above need more, not less, public housing. Far will contribute to improving safety in the from bulldozing large public housing Development. It gets at the social deter- projects, we should be embarking upon a minants of crime. In addition, however, concerted effort to significantly increase specific strategies aimed at providing op- the total supply of good quality public portunities to gang members and prospec- housing available to meet the needs of the tive gang members are needed. Exactly large numbers of low-income people in what these would look like is best deter- Winnipeg who need it. With a greater sup- mined by gang members themselves, and ply of good quality public housing, there those who work closely with them. But in would be less need for particular housing general terms, it is important to provide projects to become ‘housing of last resort’ to gang members real choices about their for those in greatest need, and the prob- lives, by creating opportunities to live well lems that arise from the concentration of in a non-gang environment. poverty would be eased.

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 69 References

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72 North End Winnipeg’s Lord Selkirk Park Housing Development