Underwriting suburbanization: The National Housing Act and the Canadian city

Abstract

An enduring theme in Canadian federal housing policy is promotion of home ownership through state‐supported institutional mortgage finance. This article studies National Housing Act (NHA) mortgage lending that occurred in Vancouver in 1951, at the outset of the post‐war era. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) archival mortgage files, which constitute the data source for this article, have rarely been used in academic scholarship and never previously for study of NHA lending patterns. The objective of this study is twofold: (1) to provide a detailed description of such lending in Vancouver for 1951, identify trends in the data, and make comparisons with the 1951 Census; and (2) evaluate a widespread view in the literature that the NHA promoted post‐war suburbanization. The article also demonstrates the potential utility of this unique data source for the study of Canadian urban geography.

Planning for affordable housing, its engagement with mixed use planning, and revising how affordability is defined

“…van Hoffman ( 2009) remarks on the experience of the United States, noting that the Great Depression was especially consequential for housing as it led to a substantial amount of foreclosures on houses and farms across the country. The housing crises being experienced in both countries led each one to develop new housing legislation to support and rebuild the housing market, addressing issues of housing affordability, as well as other issues such as housing availability (Bélec, 2015). In Canada, this piece of legislation was the 1935 Dominion Housing Act (DHA), replaced in 1938 by the National Housing Act (NHA), which came to be administered by Canada's federal housing agency, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (Bélec, 2015).…”

“…It is important to note that, at its conception, The DHA's primary goal was to spur the economy and address unemployment through a federal mortgage lending scheme (Bélec, 2015;Oberlander & Fallick, 1992). Oberlander and Fallick (1992) emphasize this point by imagining the CMHC's mandate as "mortgage finance [precedes] other housing issues in importance," (p. 44).…”

Subterranean Commodification: Informal Housing and the Legalization of Basement Suites in Vancouver from 1928 to 2009

“…The City tacitly worked in conjunction with national Keynesian‐era demand‐side policies that encouraged commodified access to housing. Spurred by systems of mortgage support, tax subsidies and freeway investment, the rate of homeownership rose in conjunction with spreading suburbanization (Belec, ).…”