1. The Bureaucratic Constraint holds that bureaucracies are not qualified to deliver many services. Some tasks are better accomplished by volunteers working in an informal organization, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, where the volunteers share the same affliction as the beneficiaries. The Majoritarian Constraint suggests that because democratic governments require majority support for their activities, the third sector allows minorities to engage in activities that do not enjoy the support of the majority. ( Douglas, James, Why Charity? The Case for a Third Sector [Beverly Hills, 1983), chaps. 7 and 8.)Google Scholar

2. Gidron, B., Kramer, R. M., and Salamon, L. M., “Government and the Third Sector in a Comparative Perspective: Allies or Adversaries?” in Gidron, B., Kramer, R. M., and Salamon, L. M., eds., Government ant! the Third Sector: Emerging Relationships in Welfare States (San Francisco, 1992), 5.Google Scholar

3. Salamon, L. M., “The Rise of the Nonprofit Sector,” Foreign Affairs 73 (07-08 1994): 109–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. Lipsky, M. and Smith, S. R., “Nonprofit Organizations, Government, and the Welfare State,” Political Science Quarterly (1989-1990): 625.Google Scholar Expressions like “voluntary group” or “nonprofit group” have several different meanings. In North America the “third sector” generally describes all those organizations between the private and public sectors. Despite the diversity, the literature suggests a general agreement on three basic characteristics of nonprofit organizations: (1) these organizations are, de jure, separate and independent from government, though they may rely on government for funding; (2) these organizations rely on volunteer contributions and cannot legally distribute profits to shareholders; and (3) these organizations primarily pursue social benefits rather than profits from exchange. ( Douglas, J., Why Charity? chap. 2.)Google Scholar

5. Pifer, Alan, “Philanthropy, Voluntarism, and Changing Times,” Daedalus 116 (1987): 124–25.Google Scholar

6. Salamon, Lester M., “Of the Market, Voluntary Failure, and Third Party Government: Toward a Theory of Government-Nonprofit Relations in the Modern Welfare State,” in Ostrander, S. A. and Langton, S., eds., Shifting the Debate: Public/Private Relations in the Modern Wel-fare State (New Brunswick, N.J., 1987), 30–31Google Scholar ; and Quarter, Jack, Canada's Social Economy: Co-operatives, Non-profits, and Other Community Enterprises (Toronto, 1992), 47Google Scholar.

7. , Gidron, , Kramer, and , Salamon, Government and the Third Sector, 5.Google Scholar

8. Salamon, L. M. and Abramson, A. J., The Federal Budget and the Non-Profit Sector (Washington, D.C., 1981)Google Scholar ; and Steinberg, Richard, “Voluntary Donations and Public Expenditures in a Federalist System,” American Economic Review 77 (03 1987): 24–36Google Scholar.

9. See Goetz, Edward G., “Local Government Support for Nonprofit Housing: A Survey of U.S. Cities,” Urban Affairs Quarterly (03 1992): 420–35.Google Scholar

10. Mishra, Ramesh, The Welfare State in Capitalist Society (Toronto, 1990), 78.Google Scholar

11. Weir, Margaret, “Ideas and the Politics of Bounded Innovation,” in Steinmo, Sven, Thelen, Kathleen, and Longstreth, Frank, eds., Structuring Politics: Historical Jnstitutionalism in Comparative Analysis (New York, 1992), 188–216Google Scholar ; and Politics and Jobs: The Boundaries of Employment Policy in the United States (Princeton, 1992), 18–26Google Scholar.

12. Thelen, Kathleen and Steinmo, Sven, “Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics,” in Steinmo, Sven, Thelen, Kathleen, and Longstreth, Frank, eds., Structuring Politics: Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis (New York, 1992), 27.Google Scholar

13. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Social Housing Review (Ottawa, 1984), 193–96.Google ScholarPubMed

14. In both the Tenant Management Demonstration project in the United State and cooperative projects in the United Kingdom, the start-up costs associated with the development, establishment, and maintenance of “alternative housing organizations” required funding from the government, and in some cases from the private sector as well; additional resources were also needed for training tenants to operate and manage housing projects. See Manpower Research Development Corporation, Tenant Management: Findings from a Three-year Experiment in Public Housing; William Diaz, Tenant Management: An Historical and Analytical Overview (Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, 1979)Google Scholar ; and Kolodny, Robert, What Happens When Tenants Manage Their Own Public Housing (Office of Public Policy Development and Research: United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, 1983)Google Scholar ; and Tinker, Anthea et al., “What Can Housing Co-ops Offer? A Summary of Some Preliminary Results from a National DoE Survey of Co-operative Housing,” Housing Review 36:3 (05-06 1987): 97Google Scholar.

15. Fallis, George, “The Social Policy Challenge and Social Housing,” in Richards, John and Watson, William G., eds., Home Remedies: Rethinking Canadian Housing Policy (Toronto, 1995), 28.Google Scholar The social housing sector includes public-government-run projects, municipal non-profit projects, private nonproflts, and cooperatives that are funded by various government programs at the federal and provincial levels.

16. The benefits attributed to nonprofit and cooperative organizations are numerous. Nonprofit organizations are viewed as important in modern states because they allocate many services throughout society and play a crucial role in maintaining democratic practices. Among the services are assistance to people with special needs, battered-women's shelters, children's medical assistance, food banks, hospices for terminally ill patients, low- and middle-income housing, recreational activities, and runaway-youth hostels. These organizations also contribute to democratic practice by promoting altruistic values and collective purposes, emphasizing the needs of clients over bureaucratic procedures, supporting self-governance, and maintaining the bonds of “civic association.” (Breton, Raymond, “The Non-State-Non-Market Component of the Social Order and the Production of Social Capital,” Papers in Political Economy [February 1991]: 13 and 28-29.)Google Scholar

Such views have a long tradition in political thought. In 1830s, Tocqueville anticipated: “If the inhabitants of democratic countries had neither the right [n]or the taste for uniting for political objects their independence would run great risks… if they did not learn some habits of acting together in the affairs of daily life, civilization itself would be in peril.” ( deTocqueville, Alexis, Democracy in America, trans. Lawrence, G., ed. Mayer, J. P. [New York, 1966), 514Google Scholar .) Moreover, it is the ability to tolerate different views of the public good that pluralism sees as the hallmark of a free society, and voluntary organizations are distinguished as mechanisms for putting the pluralist philosophy into practice. ( Walzer, Michael, “Toward a Theory of Social Assignments,” in Knowlton, W. and Zeckhauser, R., eds., American Society: Public and Private Responsibilities [Cambridge, Mass., 1986], 90Google Scholar ; and Weisbrod, Burton, The Nonprofit Economy [Cambridge, Mass., 1988], 17.)Google Scholar

17. , Fallis, “The Social Policy Challenge,” 1.Google Scholar

18. Patterson, J., Foreword, in Haire, C., In Want of a Policy: A Survey of the Needs of Non-profit and Cooperative Housing Societies (Ottawa, 1975).Google Scholar

19. Carter, Tom, Bublick, Renate, McKee, Christine, and McFayden, Linda, Interaction of Social Housing and Social Safety Net Programs: A Basis for Discussion (Ottawa, 1993), 13–14.Google Scholar See also , Fallis, “The Social Policy Challenge,” 1-7, 38–46Google Scholar ; and Hamilton-Wentworth Housing Help Centre, The Forgotten Poor: The Plight of Single Low Individuals in Hamilton-Wentu'orth (Hamilton, Ontario, 1994)Google Scholar.

20. CMHC, Social Housing Review, 193–96.Google Scholar

21. Taggart, W. H. James, Enablement and the Community: A Policy Approach for the Future (Ottawa 1997), 37.Google Scholar

22. Even the public housing program, which is fully targeted to low-income households, had significant rates of participation.

23. Many transition homes run by nonprofits offer long-term accommodation up to six months, as well as child-care services, skills training, and education. ( McClain, Janet, “Housing as a Human Service: Accommodating Special Needs,” in House, Home, Community, 229.)Google Scholar

24. Cited in Sewell, John, Houses and Homes: Housing for Canadians (Toronto, 1994), 180Google Scholar.

25. As Fallis notes: “The mix of income was regarded as essential, not just to make social housing buildings more acceptable to neighbors, but also as part of a well functioning urban community.” ( , Fallis, “The Social Policy Challenge,” 12.)Google Scholar

26. CMHC, Social Housing Review, 20.Google Scholar Alex Laidlaw, noted housing reformer, for example, has argued in favor of social mixing on these grounds: “Our social thinking accepts that notion that all children can attend the same school, rich and poor can worship together in the same church, we can go to the same grocery stores and shopping centers, ride the buses side by side and mingle in parks without separating the poor for special treatment.… Our social creed still insists that people of low-income some how be separated in their own neighbor-hoods and identified by their housing or its location.” ( Laidlaw, A. F., Housing You Can Afford, 33–34.)Google Scholar

27. In contrast to public housing experiments of the time, most social housing projects fit into the immediate environment. Municipal nonprofit companies in Toronto, Ottawa, and Vancouver displayed design characteristics that were much different from public projects: buildings and building entrances faced directly onto the street, not onto grass or private walkways; buildings were built on public streets with normal municipal services such as garbage collection, street-lighting, and street cleaning; plans called for very little common open space, preferring instead clearly defined front and backyards; household sizes and ages would be mixed, and units for the disabled would be integral to projects. These design elements meant that nonprofit housing shared the characteristics of many other buildings in the neighborhood. ( , Sewell, Houses and Homes, 167–68Google Scholar .) Because of these features, resistance to non-profit and cooperative housing was less than to public projects.

The type of unit design is important in the success of low-income projects. Oscar Newman, based on his study of New York Housing Authority Projects, argued that high-rise developments are unsatisfactory for low-income families with children. ( Newman, Oscar, Defensible Space [New York, 1972].)Google Scholar

28. Rose, A., Canadian Housing Policies 1935-1980 (Toronto, 1980), 16.Google Scholar

29. Carver, Humphrey, Houses for Canadians: A Study of Housing Problems in the Toronto Area (Toronto, 1948), 4.Google Scholar

30. , Carver, Houses for Canadians, 63.Google Scholar

31. Miron, John R., House, Home, and Community: Progress in Housing Canadians, 1945-1986 (Montreal, 1993).Google Scholar

32. Cited in , Bacher, Keeping to the Marketplace: The Evolution of Canadian Housing Policy (Montreal, 1993), 109.Google Scholar

33. In the Dominion Housing Act (1935), the federal government emphasized the private housing industry and encouraged private enterprise to move into home building operations. The federal government participated directly in ensuring adequate sources of capital for the housing industry and provided direct assistance to small builders to establish the private sector as the main vehicle for housing construction.

34. , Rose, Canadian Housing Policies, 30Google Scholar

35. Ibid., 29.

36. Fallis, “The Social Policy Challenge,” 7. In the first three years, CMHC became the largest landlord in the nation with in excess of forty thousand housing units. In 1954, charteted banks were permitted to lend money for housing and a new mortgage insurance policy was implemented by the federal government to facilitate private lending.

37. Some of the first initiatives in public housing were taken by city governments. Regent Park in Toronto, built in 1947, is a good example. See Rose, A., Regent Park: A Study in Slum Clearance (Toronto, 1958)Google Scholar.

38. , Sewell, Houses and Homes, 134.Google Scholar During the 1950s and 1960s, the federal government used the Limited Dividend program to create private rental units at 5 to 10 percent below market rents. The objective of the program was to provide a loan scheme that would increase the supply of moderately priced rental housing for low-income households. This program served as the main instrument of federal policy for stimulating investment in affordable rental housing. Private developers were offered high-ratio mortgage loans (between 90 and 95 percent) with an amortization period of up to fifty years. The loans were offered at rates usually about 2 percent below private mortgages; in return, private developers accepted a limitation on return. Throughout the program, the level of activity was volatile because developers would move in and out depending on the buoyancy of the private market. According to Dennis and Fish, the impact of this program on low-income housing was meager. “Experience with the program in the late 1950s and early 1960s included: poor locations; lack of amenities; poor design and construction; small, non-family units; poor maintenance and project management; and high-grading in tenant selection.” ( Dennis, M. and Fish, S., Programs in Search of a Policy [Toronto, 1972], 241–42.)Google Scholar

39. Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Social Housing Review (Ottawa, 1984), 13Google Scholar ; and , Rose, Canadian Housing Policies, 39–40Google Scholar.

40. , Rose, Canadian Housing Policies, 96.Google Scholar

41. By the late 1960s, the third sector had emerged as the preferred alternative to both the private sector and the public sector. The nonprofit program was initially contained in the 1964 NHA where nonprofit and cooperatives were offered the same terms as private limited dividend companies. Eventually, third-sector programs were incorporated in their own sections of the NHA in 1973 (sections 15.1, 34.18).

42. For a review of housing policy before World War II, see John Bacher, Keeping to the Marketplace.

43. , Rose, Canadian Housing Policies, 29.Google Scholar

44. , Sewell, Houses and Homes, 87.Google Scholar Albert Rose, argues, “[One] consequence of this set of policies was clearly the expansion of vast suburban areas adjacent to every medium-sized and large urban center. The problems that have ensued, both for the governments and residents of suburban areas and the governments of central cities which did not directly benefit from this encouragement to home ownership, are immeasurable.” (, Rose, Canadian Housing Policies, 20–21Google Scholar.) Many of the “new” suburban neighborhoods were beyond the means of low-income house-holds and were primarily interested “in protecting their area from unfavorable intrusions and securing neighborhood improvements from the city,” Kaplan, Harold, Planning and City Politics (Toronto, 1981), 164.Google Scholar

Postwar developments typically have densities of fewer than eight thousand residents per square mile compared to densities of fifteen thousand to twenty thousand residents per square mile for older developments. Single-detached suburban homes, typically of developments, have a high rate of energy consumption, a low land-use efficiency, and a high cost for infrastructure. This design increases distances and traveling time between public facilities (i.e., malls, churches, schools), and “forces” the use of cars because low suburban densities cannot support public transit. The roadways needed for transport are underutilized and waste vast tracts of land. (Schoenauer, Norbert, Cities, Suburbs, and Dwellings in the Post-War Era [Montreal, 1994]Google Scholar.) Kaplan, Harold, Reform, Planning, and City Politics (Toronto, 198), 164.Google Scholar

Zoning and land-control policies at the local level were instrumental in promoting homogeneous neighborhoods and encouraging segregation of low-income and special-needs house-holds. Initially these mechanisms were designed to protect residents from land-uses that might cause excessive noise, pollution, or traffic. According to Fowler, however, “zoning for segregation has been woefully overused and misused… segregation is also pursued as a way of excluding unwanted people—the poor, the undesirable ‘ethnic,’ the residents of a halfway house.… Zoning policy… aimed at protecting the homogeneity of neighborhoods produces even more unrelenting physical homogeneity.” (Fowler, Edmund, Building Cities That Work [Montreal, 1992], 156.)Google Scholar

The pace and scope of growth following World War II also placed considerable strain on provincial and municipal governments. New planning policies and approaches allowed them to respond, but contributed to their own problems. First, developers were required to install basic services and build streets as part of their proposals. Lot levies were also imposed to contribute to community facilities. These measures improved the quality of suburban developments, but, at the same time, placed the cost of most new housing beyond the means of low-income households. ( Patterson, J., “Housing and Community Development Policies,” in House, Home, Community, 323–324.)Google Scholar

45. , Dennis and , Fish, Programs in Search of a Policy, 263.Google Scholar

46. In the province of Quebec, for example, 1,779 families had been displaced through urban renewal by 1965, but only 796 units of subsidized housing had been completed. Most of these demolitions were low-income, inner-city units that provided affordable rents in spite of sometimes poor conditions. ( Bacher, J., Keeping to the Marketplace, 219Google Scholar .) Only a handful of urban renewal projects, however, were constructed in Canada compared to the United States and the United Kingdom. These projects, however, were politically and physically highly visible and dispersed across the nation. ( Poulton, Michael, “Affordable Homes at an Affordable (Social) Price,” in Home Remedies, 54.)Google Scholar

47. George Fallis observes, “The benefits per household were large, but only a lucky few participated.” ( , Fallis, “The Social Policy Challenge,” 10.)Google Scholar

48. Task Force on Housing and Urban Development (Ottawa, 1969), 22.Google Scholar Similarly, at a conference in 1969, the Canadian Council on Social Development forwarded three major recommendations on housing policy: housing could no longer be treated as a market commodity; every resident should have a legal right to housing; and all levels of government should take a more prominent role in the delivery, financing, and production of housing. ( McClain, Janet, “And Where Do We Go From Here? Future Housing Policies Provincial and Municipal Involvement,” A New Housing Strategy for Ontario: Academic Roundtable and Public Forum [Toronto, 1991], 44.)Google Scholar

49. Task Force on Housing and Urban Development, 53-54.

50. , Fallis, “The Social Policy Challenge,” 10.Google Scholar Rose, for example, in review of the program, argued that “when a substantial degree of national resources and effort is devoted towards making every Canadian family a house owner, then there is a special kind of label, a special taint or blight to be placed upon those families who, despite all the favorable manipulations in the basic policy, cannot afford a house of their own.” ( , Rose, Canadian Housing Policies, 36.)Google Scholar

51. , Dennis and , Fish, Programs in Search of a Policy, 15.Google Scholar

52. Banting, K. G., “Social Housing in a Divided State,” in Fallis, G. and Murray, A., eds., Housing the Homeless and Poor (Toronto), 126–27.Google Scholar

53. , Rose, Canadian Housing Policies, 54.Google Scholar

54. Ibid., 54.

55. Carroll, B., “Housing,” in Loretto, Richard A. and Price, Trevor, eds., Urban Policy Issues: Canadian Perspectives (Toronto, 1990), 92.Google Scholar

56. Smith, L. B., The Anatomy of a Crisis: Housing Policy in the 1970s (Toronto, 1978), 3.Google Scholar

57. In addition to the nonprofit/cooperative program, the federal government also initiated the Assisted Home Ownership Program (AHOP) to stimulate the private market and the Neighbourhood Improvement Program (NIP) and the Residential Rehabilitation Assistance Programs to redevelop inner-city neighborhoods and communities. Carroll, B., “Housing,” 92–94Google Scholar ; and Higgins, Donald J., Local and Urban Politics in Canada (Toronto, 1986), 274–76.Google Scholar

The Assisted Home Ownership Program (34.15 and 34.16) was not a major derivation from the government's earlier attempts at stimulating home ownership under Part IV.2, Loans to Facilitate Home-ownership, with the principal exception AHOP loans were directed to lower-income families with dependent children. AHOP eventually came to serve primarily middle-income households. Streich, Patricia A., “The Affordability of Housing in Post-War Canada,” in Miron, J. R.. ed., House, Home, Community Progress in Housing Canadian, 1945-1986 (Montreal, 1993), 266.Google Scholar

The Neighborhood Improvement Plan (NIP) was introduced by the federal government in 1973 to revitalize and rehabilitate older neighborhoods. The emphasis of the program was on rehabilitation of the existing stock and infill construction instead of demolition and new construction. Rehabilitation and conservation programs operated under greatly reduced planning requirements. The NIP guidelines stated:

The planning process is one which does not contemplate the preparation of an elaborate plan before action commences. It emphasizes action along with planning as a continuous process and seeks to avoid the negative effects and consequent lethargy that results from a long period of study, analysis, and planning before action is taken. Consequently, implementation may proceed when a concept plan, which includes a budget, has been formulated and accepted. Generally, detailed planning of specific proposals should be under-taken during the implementation stage.

NIP also provided a flexible framework for citizen participation:

Due to the wide variety in regional, historical, and cultural factors, it would be difficult to establish specific criteria for a model format of resident participation. What follows is therefore a set of general principles which should be considered when establishing the structure of participation.

The NIP was consolidated with the Municipal Infrastructure Program and the Municipal Incentive Grant Program. The aim was to reduce federal involvement and distribute the funds more broadly in cities and provinces. Implementation was based on two-year global agreements with provincial governments. About 60 percent of first year's funding was directed to water and sewer facilities and services. The program was cancelled in November 1980 because of the increasing concern over the federal deficit. From Canadian Housing Programs: A Different Approach, Journal of Housing 09-10 1982: 140.Google Scholar

58. , Sewell, Houses and Homes, 164–65.Google Scholar Although the loans set spending limits on the maximum amount a nonprofit corporation could pay per unit (maximum unit prices), these limits were an open-ended feature in that they varied from community to community to reflect variations in land and construction costs.

59. CMHC, Social Housing Review, 17.Google Scholar

60. , Sewell, Houses and Homes, 168.Google Scholar Provinces administered the program based on global agreements with the federal government and set rents at the same level as lower market rents in the neighborhood. Program subsidies came in two parts. First, the interest rate on mortgages was held at 2 percent for up to fifty years. Second, the difference between market rents and the rent charged for low-income families was subsidized. To account for the increasing costs of constructing nonprofit projects, the federal government also raised start-up cost subsidies to 75,000 for new ventures. As the grants grew in size, however, their benefit became less available to community groups because government officials were reluctant to risk large grants on new or less experienced groups.

61. The cooperative program was the target of much criticism because most co-op house-holds “did not conform to a profile of a population with a strong claim for social assistance in the form of housing subsidies or any other subsidies.” ( , Poulton, “Affordable Homes at an Affordable (Social) Price,” in Home Remedies: Rethinking Canadian Housing Policy, 66.)Google Scholar

62. In 1975, the Liberal party implemented wage and price controls and encouraged the provinces to implement rent controls to contain the costs of shelter. Moreover, the Report of the Auditor General, in 1976, stated, “I am deeply concerned that Parliament—and indeed the government—has lost, or is close to losing effective control of the public purse.” ( Canada Report of the Auditor General [Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services, 1976), 9–11Google Scholar .) The emphasis on fiscal accountability in this period eventually prompted the establishment of the Royal Commission on Financial Management and Accountability (the Lambert Commission). The reasons for the appointment of this commission “were the unprecedented demands placed on government by the growth in its responsibilities and programs; a desire to ensure the efficiency and probity in the public service of Canada; a serious concern about the adequacy of financial administration in government for establishing effective control over, and account-ability for, public funds; and the need to achieve the effective use of resources, the avoidance of waste, and increased productivity in government.” ( Royal Commission on Financial Management and Accountability, Final Report [Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services, 1979], 1.)Google Scholar

63. The Assisted Home Ownership Program, which was introduced in 1973 along with the nonprofit program, faltered when increasing mortgage rates in the late 1970s coincided with the end of interest-rate assistance. Large numbers of AHOP-assisted home owners, as a result, defaulted and abandoned their homes, making CMHC one of the largest organizations of housing units in the country. Many of these former properties, which were in the suburbs, were sold to nonprofit groups. ( Cooper, Matthew and Rodman, Margaret, New Neighbours: A Case Study of Cooperative Housing in Toronto [Toronto, 1992], 33.)Google Scholar

64. , Sewell, Houses and Homes, 171.Google Scholar

65. Ibid., 171.

66. These measures, in fact, were incorporated into section 56 of the NHA.

67. CMHC, Section 56.1 Nonprofit and Cooperative Housing Program Evaluation. Executive Summary (Ottawa 1983), 8–9 (emphasis in original).Google Scholar

68. Savoie, Donald, The Politics of Public Spending in Canada (Toronto, 1990), 139.Google Scholar

69. In 1985, the federal government introduced the principle of “small and scattered” in public housing design to ensure that the social problems associated with large-scale projects and the concentration of low-income households did not recur. Unfortunately, the program produced very little improvement. As David Hajesz observed, the intentions of “small and scattered” were primarily fulfilled by the 1973 nonprofit programs. The third sector “was more able and interested in delivering small- and medium-sized projects and in building them in culturally appropriate areas.… intentions of “small and scattered” were fulfilled by creating the funding and delivery environments that fostered this rather than through specific regulations for size and location.” ( Hajesz, David, Avoiding the Ghetto: A Preliminary Exploration of Locational Characteristics of Post'85 Social Housing Projects [Ottawa, 1994], 33.)Google Scholar

70. As Ramesh Mishra observes, “It is politically difficult to retrench mainstream programs—at least directly. The axe therefore tends to fall on unpopular minority programs such as general welfare assistance and low-income housing.” ( Mishra, R., The Welfare State in Capitalist Society, 77.)Google Scholar

71. Goetz, E. G., Shelter Burden: Local Politics and Progressive Housing Policy (Philadelphia, 1993).Google Scholar

72. In 1984, the national election gave the Conservative party of Brian Mulroney a majority government. The Nielsen task force on program review was an important element in the Mulroney agenda. Essentially, the goal of the task was twofold: to review existing government programs with consideration for providing better service to the public and improving management principles of governmental outputs. The unique characteristic of the whole exercise was that it sought much of its expertise from officials and experts outside government, particularly those in the private sector—business, labour and professional organizations. The general thrust of the task force reports was summed up by Eric Nielsen: “A central conclusion of the study teams … is the degree to which there has developed a vast array of government pro-grams that are designed to subsidize activity rather than results, effort rather than success.… Few who take the time and spend the effort to read the team reports could dispute the observation that we have become a nation of program junkies.”

Whereas the 1979 amendments reserved 25 per cent of the stock for low income families, the decline of federal involvement led to 66-75 per cent of units designated for core need households. Even though the federal government had reduced its commitment to only a few thousand units per year, subsidies for social housing continued to rise. Between 1988 and 1992, federal subsidies to nonprofit and cooperative housing increased from $670 million to $920 million and public housing subsidies increased from $548 million to $752 million. Expenditure restraint was difficult to achieve because government maintained commitments to units constructed in previous years. Moreover, the shift away from income mixing meant that government's commitment for rental subsidies was larger per unit. ( Fallis, G., “The Social Policy Challenge,” 17.)Google Scholar

73. “Housing: Filling the Void,” The Ontario Alternative Budget Papers: What We Need and How We Fund it (Toronto, 1997), 174–75.Google Scholar

74. Carroll, B., “Housing,” 101.Google Scholar

75. Ibid., 103.

76. Hulchanski, J. David, “Towards a Comprehensive Housing Strategy for Ontario: Comments on a Housing Framework for Ontario,” A New Housing Strategy for Ontario, 57, 58.Google Scholar

77. Murdie, Robert A., Social Housing in Transition: The Changing Composition of Public Sector Housing in Metropolitan Toronto (Ottawa, 1992), 4.Google Scholar

78. Close to half the households leaving public housing (44 percent) cite full-time employment as their primary source of income. ( Ekos Research Associates, Final Report for the Survey of Tenants Leaving Public Housing [Ottawa 1991], iii, 31.)Google Scholar

79. Anderson, George, Housing Policy in Canada (Vancouver, 1992), 51.Google Scholar

80. , Sewell, Houses and Homes, 174.Google Scholar

81. See , Banting, “Social Housing in a Divided State,” in , Fallis and , Murray, eds., Housing the Homeless and Poor, 145–47Google Scholar ; and Fillion, Pierre, “Government Levels, Neighbourhood Influence, and Urban Policy,” in Thaler, Henri Lustinger, ed., Political Arrangements: Power and the City (Montreal, 1992), 174–75Google Scholar.

82. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation has used the 30 percent benchmark to define “core need” groups since the late 1980s.

83. Peter Drier, Keynote Address to the Canadian Housing Coalition, 4 October 1993.

84. Steele, Marion, “The Implications of a Housing Allowance for Social Housing,” in Kjellberg, Judith, ed., Shelter Allowances, Rents, and Social Housing: Contributions to the Debate (Toronto, 1984), 45, 49.Google Scholar

85. “Housing: Filling the Void,” 182.

86. Although many people support social housing objectives, they oppose projects that will affect them directly. Social housing is a source of anxiety “to the extent that it is seen as having a detrimental impact on particular aspects of community life that are already important to local residents.” ( Ekos Research Associates, Final Report for the Survey of Tenants Leaving Public Housing, 57Google Scholar .) See Carter, T. and McAfee, A., “The Municipal Role,” in House, Home, Community, 239Google Scholar ; and , Fowler, Building Cities That Work, 157Google Scholar , for other impediments to social housing at the local level.

87. , Banting, “Social Housing in a Divided State,” 147.Google Scholar

88. J. David Hulchanski argues that government expenditures on housing constitute one of the smallest areas of government expenditure $133 billion (or 1. 3 percent of government expenditures) in 1988-89 and has been declining continually over the past ten years. Hulchanski, J. David, “Canadian Government Housing Expenditures: A Ten-Year Review,” City Magazine 7 (Spring 1990): 19–22Google Scholar.

89. Walzer, Michael, “Socializing the Welfare State,” in Gutmann, Amy ed., Democracy and the Welfare State (Princeton, 1988), 26.Google Scholar

90. Salamon, L. M., “Third Party Government,” 39 (emphasis in original).Google Scholar

91. Ibid., 39.