Self-Building in the Urban Housing Market

Clark University

Self-Building in the Urban Housing MarketAuthor(s): Richard HarrisSource: Economic Geography, Vol. 67, No. 1 (Jan., 1991), pp. 1-21Published by: Clark UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/143633 .

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VOL. 67 JANUARY, 1991 No.

SELF-BUILDING IN THE URBAN HOUSING MARKET*

RICHARD HARRIS

McMaster University

Because of a lack of evidence, we know little about how housing was built in North American cities before World War II. A new method, based on the concept of a "self- built threshold," uses property assessment records to estimate the contribution of self- building to total construction at a given place and time. An application of this method indicates that self-building accounted for one-third of new construction in Toronto, Ontario between 1901-1913. The evidence validates the proposed method and raises questions about models of the housing market that assume that housing is purchased from savings and current income alone.

In recent years, social scientists and his- torians have paid a good deal of attention to the subject of housing. In so doing, they have focused upon patterns of consumption as opposed to the processes of housing production. This is especially true of the many studies of social segregation and residential differentiation, which, in effect, deal with the way in which housing consumption varies geographically from one social group to another. In part, this bias reflects the difficulty of obtaining precise information about how homes and neighborhoods are actually built. Addressing the data problem, this paper presents and ap- plies a research method that makes it possible to throw new light upon the ways in which North Americans have been housed.

In advanced capitalist societies such as Canada and the U.S., housing is typically produced in one of three ways: by custom builders, often working with architects, who are employed by specific clients; by speculative (merchant) builders or developers who build in anticipation of demand; and by owner-builders who, in varying degrees, build their own homes.

*1 would like to thank Paul Ezers, Ali Grant, and Bonnie Wallage for gathering data, Richard Dennis for comments on this paper, and Jim Lemon for many helpful discussions. A grant from the Arts Research Board at McMaster University and a Fellowship from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council provided financial support.

The inadequacy of existing research is un- derlined by the fact that we have no clear idea of what proportion of dwellings has been built by each of these methods. To- day, especially in the larger urban centers, the speculative builder/developer is domi- nant. But this was not always the case. Many existing dwellings and neighborhoods were developed by custom or owner-builders.

Of the three methods of residential construction, we know least about owner (or self-) building. From the vantage point of the present, the speculative builder appears to be not only typical but also the historically progressive force. As a result, in both historical and contemporary con- texts, his activities and his product have received some attention [6; 7; 19; 20; 21]. For a different reason, we know something about custom builders. The recent interest in historic preservation has encouraged research on the design and construction of architecturally noteworthy older homes. These tend to be the homes of the more affluent, who were, in turn, especially likely to have engaged the services of custom builders and architects. In contrast, the modest owner-builder has been largely overlooked. More important in the past than the present, he built homes that, for a variety of reasons, have often not endured in their original form and that, if they have, are rarely considered to be of



2 ECONoMIc GEOGRAPHY

note. Focusing on the activities of the self- builder, this paper is concerned with an especially neglected element in the building process.

Available research suggests that owner- builders played an important part in the building of North American cities before World War II. Case studies of Milwaukee, Detroit, and Toronto around the turn of the century all make this point, as does Say- well's survey of residential construction across Canada [9; 15; 16; 24]. In the 1920s, Whitten and Adams [22] implied that about one quarter of new single-family homes across the U.S. at that time were owner- built. Unfortunately, most researchers have relied on the impressionistic state- ments of contemporaries. None has offered precise and conclusive evidence regarding the general prevalence of self-building. The difficulty here lies in the nature of the available data sources, none of which al- lows us to identify with certainty every home that was self-built. Used creatively, however, these sources can be made to yield a precise and reasonably accurate estimate of the contribution of owner- building to new construction as a whole. The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss a method by which such an estimate can be derived, and to apply this method to Toronto, Ontario, in the period 1901-1913.

The case study indicates that the proposed method is viable and that self- building played a major role in Toronto's housing market in the years leading up to World War I. There are reasons to believe that Toronto's experience was similar to that of many North American cities. To encourage and facilitate comparable studies of other cities, a brief concluding section highlights the data requirements of the proposed method and discusses how it might be applied and extended in varying local situations.

METHOD

Previous studies that have discussed self-building in North American cities have relied on impressionistic evidence. In his

broad survey of residential construction in Canadian cities, for example, Saywell [15] draws heavily on newspaper accounts. Whitten and Adams [22, p. 25] offer a more precise assessment, which is, however, based only on the reported impressions of building inspectors across the U. S. Simon's [16, ch. 4] detailed study of "city-building" in Milwaukee depends on the qualitative evidence contained in contemporary reports, coupled with circumstantial evidence on homeownership rates and the social character of suburban self-built neighborhoods. Using building permits, Zunz [24, pp. 170-6] has come closest to trying to enumerate the owner-builders, but he makes no attempt to assess their relative contribution to the building process, even within the particular districts on which he focuses his attention.

There is good reason for this reliance upon qualitative evidence. There are no generally available sources that make it possible to determine whether particular North American homes were owner-built in the years before World War II. Only two sources, building permits and property tax assessments, come close to being satisfactory and therefore merit close consideration.

BUILDING PERMITS AND PROPERTY

TAX ASSESSMENTS

It might seem that building permits would make it possible to determine whether particular homes were owner- built. Permits often contain the name of the applicant and the name of the builder. If the names are the same, then it might seem reasonable to infer that the dwelling was self-built. But such an inference would be unwarranted. It is quite possible, indeed probable, that speculative builders would appear both as the applicant and as the builder. An example should make the point. In Toronto before World War I, one of the most rapidly growing districts was Earlscourt. This district was bisected by Earlscourt Avenue, and permit records show that in 1912 on three short blocks of this avenue application was made to build



THE URBAN HOUSING MARKET 3

a total of twenty-two new homes. In most of these cases, the permits record the "owner" as the builder of the proposed dwelling. In some cases, the "owners" in question were evidently owner-builders, in the sense employed here. On a vacant lot, for example, a Mr. Bailey applied for permission to build himself a "one-storey frame kitchen" at an estimated cost of $200.1 In several cases, however, the "owner" was building on spec rather than for his own use. The case of a Mr. F. Moore, who applied for permission to build six pairs of two-story semidetached dwellings, is the most obvious.2 With sufficient patience, it is possible to separate true owner-builders from the rest. For example, city directories might be used to check whether the name of the first occupant of the home is the same as that of the applicant/builder. Where all three names are the same, we might reasonably conclude that the home was self-built. In the cases mentioned above, Mr. Bailey turns out (not surprisingly) to be an owner- builder, while Mr. Moore does not.

Other problems typically cannot be re- solved, even with patience. Most obviously, in cases where building was not regulated (or where records have been lost), permits are not available. Until the turn of the century, many cities, and until at least the 1920s many suburbs, did not require home-builders to take out a permit [10]. In that regard, Toronto was typical. Even where permits were nominally required, the enforcement of regulations might have been lax. For a fringe district within the city of Detroit around the turn of the century, Zunz [24, p. 173] reports that he was able to locate permits for only 23 out of a total of 69 properties. In Canada, a correspondent for Conservation of Life, a publication of the federal Commission on Conservation, noted in 1914 that "building regulations in Canadian cities are . . . notoriously inadequate, and such as do exist are rarely enforced" [13]. This was certainly true in Toronto at the turn of the

century, where permits were required only within "fire limits" (cf. Dennis [4, pp. 26-7]). After a fire in 1904, regulations were tightened and extended. By 1913, it seems that virtually every new dwelling within the city received a permit. This, at any rate, is a reasonable inference based on the situation in Earlscourt. Between 1910 and 1913, the property assessments indicate, 38 new dwelling units were built on three blocks on Earlscourt Avenue, while in the same period permits were sought for 45. Allowing for a few cases where permits were obtained but buildings not built, it seems that virtually every new dwelling received a permit. 3 But this situation was reached at the end of a long process. For many years after the introduction of building regulations, their coverage was incomplete.

The incompleteness of building permits matters because of the bias that it inevitably introduces. Available evidence and common sense suggest that self-building has almost always been most common at the fringe of the urban area, towards or beyond the jurisdictional boundary of the city. The neighborhoods of self-building identified by Zunz and Simon, for example, were located in just such areas. In part, it was precisely the absence (or lax enforcement) of regulations that attracted low- income owner-builders. In such situations, the use of permit data will lead us to under- estimate the prevalence of self-building. The extent of underestimation is likely to vary greatly from place to place. More importantly, there is no obvious way of determining the degree of underestimation for any particular place.

Bias is likely even where the coverage of the permits is complete. In general, it seems that a relatively high proportion of owner-builders in North American cities have been immigrants with low incomes. It is especially likely that immigrants, un- familiar with or unsympathetic to North American ways, would have fallen through the bureaucratic net. The same is true of

'Building permit no. 34710, 1912. City of Toronto Archives, City Hall, Toronto.

2Building permit no. 35496, 1912. City of Toronto Archives, City Hall, Toronto.

31t is difficult to link specific permit applications with specific properties in the assessments, as about half of all permit applications gave no street address.



4 ECONOMic GEOGRAPHY

low-income households, who would have been especially keen to avoid attracting attention from by-law inspectors) who might force them to spend more than they wished, and perhaps more than they could afford, in building their homes. For a variety of reasons, then, and in most situations, building permits cannot be used to provide a reliable estimate of the prevalence of self- building.

The only other generally available source of information on every property in North American cities is the property tax assessment. As a rule, assessment rolls possess three important advantages over building permits. First, they are quite often available for every property in both cities and suburbs. Second, they are available for a longer period of time, since most municipalities have been taxing (and therefore assessing) property for longer than they have been regulating it. Third, they are richer in that they often contain information about the character of the occupants (notably their occupation) that makes it possible to establish connections between housing and the social geography of the city. The drawback of the assessments is that they do not contain information that makes it possible to identify, with certainty, how specific dwellings were built. In fact, with patience and care, this limita- tion can be circumvented, so that the assessments can be used to provide a precise and reliable guide to the prevalence of self- building at a given place and time. This may be done by using available evidence on assessed building values to estimate the relative proportion of homes that fall below the "self-built threshold."

THE "SELF-BUILT THRESHOLD"

It seems that, in North America at any rate, self-building in urban areas has oc- curred largely, through necessity, at the lower end of the housing market.4 Noting

that in Detroit self-built homes (and the land on which they sat) were typically very cheap, Zunz [24, p. 175] states simply that "the formal market simply was not in the business of building such cheap homes." This insight may be formalized in the concept of the "self-built threshold," a level that is defined in terms of the market value below which speculative builders will not build because profit margins are too small or nonexistent. The only people who can build homes below this figure are owner- builders since they are, in effect, substitut- ing sweat equity for wage labor. Also, and especially for a year or two, an owner- builder might be willing to erect and occupy a home more modest, and therefore worth less, than anything that a contractor would risk building on spec. At the ex- treme, he might build a mere shack.

The precise level of the self-built threshold will, of course, vary by time and place. It will be determined, among other things, by prevailing wage levels in the construction industry, by the cost of building materials, by the availability and cost of building finance, and by the social and technical organization of the building industry. For a particular time and place, however, the implication is that any new dwelling with a market value below this threshold may be assumed to have been self-built.

Such an inference is broadly reasonable, although subject to qualification. It is valid only when applied to homes built recently. At any point in time, a city might contain many speculatively-built homes that, over the years, have deteriorated to the point at which they are worth less than the current self-built threshold. Deterioration and relative decline has long been enshrined in the concept of "filtering." Although filtering has probably not been as common as was once thought, it clearly affected substantial segments of the housing stock during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For this reason, we may not infer that any dwelling worth less than the

4This is not necessarily true of rural areas, where contractors may not exist and quite substantial dwellings might be owner-built. In an urban context, self- building is most likely to occur in more prosperous segments of the housing market when exceptionally rapid population growth overwhelms the capacity of

the local building industry. To some extent, this seems to have happened in Toronto just before World War I.




current threshold was self-built; such inference is reasonable only for recently- built homes. But what is "recent"? A very cautious approach would define as recent only those homes built in the current year or building season. In most situations, however, a longer period can be justified. Although evidence is lacking, it seems unlikely that even those homes that even- tually filter down decline in value very much within the first decade or so of construction. In that sense, "recent" might reasonably be applied to any home built within, say, the previous ten years.

When limited in this manner, inferences based upon the concept of a self-built threshold are likely to yield a slightly conservative estimate of the relative contribution of self-building to new construction. "Slightly conservative" reflects a balancing of probabilities. On the one hand, it is possible, indeed quite likely, that some owner-built homes will be worth more than the threshold value. There is, after all, nothing to prevent owner-building within the range of activity of speculative builders. In practice, this is probably quite unusual, except where very rapid urban growth overwhelms the capacity of the building industry to provide new homes even in the potentially profitable segments of the market. The evidence reported by Zunz, Si- mon, and Saywell indicates that most of the families that built their own homes did so out of economic necessity. Those that could afford to buy a ready-built home did so. On the other hand, it is conceivable that a few homes below the threshold value might not have been built by the eventual occupant. A company, concerned about possible labor shortages or unrest, might build cheap homes for its workers at a nominal loss. Cheap, publicly-subsidized housing might fall below the threshold. Lastly, a speculative builder, misjudging his costs and market values, might build a home that is unprofitably modest, although he is not likely to continue to do so. On the whole, except in certain places and times, and until public housing becomes a significant factor, the great majority of new homes worth less than the threshold value are

likely to have been self-built. If anything, then, the application of the threshold concept will produce a slight underestimation of the significance of self-building.

The actual threshold value relevant to a particular place and time may be identified in at least three different ways, although in practice some methods are easier than others. Since the threshold-is defined in terms of profitability in the building industry, one method would be to obtain financial information on the operations of builders. In practice, such data are very difficult to come by. A more viable alternative is to identify the cheapest dwellings that were being built speculatively at the place and time in question. Field surveys of streets and neighborhoods built at the time, or an examination of insurance atlases, would identify rows of identical dwellings. Such rows, which need not necessarily be of row housing per se, are fairly conclusive evidence of speculative activity. The market value of these dwellings at the time of construction might then be determined by consulting building permits (these usually show estimated cost of construction) or assessment records for the year in question. It is likely that the cheapest housing identified in this manner will be close to, and lie just above, the threshold value.

A third method of identifying the self- built threshold relies more exclusively upon tax assessment records. Assessment records contain information about the assessed value of all types of property, in- cluding residences. A distinction is usually made between the value of the building and the value of the land on which the building sits. As a general rule, in the early twentieth century, both land and buildings were initially assessed at their current market value, or at least in some constant relation to market value. Thus, it is usually

5This is not always true. It is not essential for the method presented here that assessed values equal market values, merely that it be possible to identify in terms of assessed values the self-built threshold. If the threshold value is determined entirely from assessment data, then the procedure is straightforward. If the threshold is determined independently, for example using building permit data on estimated construction costs, it would be necessary to calculate the



6 ECONOMIc GEOGRAPHY

possible to determine from the assessments the current market value of all recently-built dwellings.6 The assessments themselves do not provide direct information about when dwellings were built. To discover which properties are of "recent" construction, it would be necessary to trace properties in the records for previous years. If, for example, "recent" were defined as "the previous ten years," then (a sample of) current properties could be checked in the assessments prepared a decade earlier to discover which had been built in the interim. In this manner, the assessments can yield an estimate of the assessed market values of (a sample of) recently-built dwellings.

Where self-building plays more than a minor role in the urban housing market, it is likely that the distribution of new dwellings by market value will be bimodal. The two modal peaks will reflect the differing concentrations of activity of the two main forms of housing construction, owner- and speculative-building. The modal peak associated with self-building will fall below the self-built threshold and that which is associated with the speculative builder will fall, obviously, above. For this reason, the value distribution of properties alone may provide a rough guide to the location of the

self-built threshold. Under certain circum- stances, it may prove to be quite a sensitive guide. In situations where there is a great deal of demand for housing from households with low or moderate incomes, there is likely to be a clustering of speculative activity just above the level at which residential construction is profitable. In such situations, the self-built threshold will lie just below the second modal peak. 7 It would be difficult to justify using the evidence of market value distributions alone to identify the threshold value. Under varying market conditions, modal peaks will bear varying relations to the threshold value. With other evidence, however, the distribution of building values can provide strongly confirming evidence.

Used with care, assessment records make it possible to operationalize the concept of the self-built threshold. It is important to emphasize, however, that the suggested method provides an estimate of the overall contribution of self-building to new construction. It may, but will not necessarily, provide a very "clean" list of properties that were, in fact, self-built. To illus- trate the point, a hypothetical table of market value distributions by type of construction may be used (Table 1). (Although hypothetical, this table is modelled on the situation in Toronto before World War I.) In this hypothetical housing market, self- building accounts for 33 percent of total construction. The actual self-built threshold value is $600. The value distribution of self-built homes (n = 100) is unimodal, with a peak below the threshold in the range of $200-400.8 The distribution for

ratio of assessed to market values. What is essential for the proposed method is that assessment procedures be consistent across the entire urban area and that buildings be assessed separately from land. In Toronto over the study period, it seems that the ratio of assessed to market value for new dwellings was about 3:4. Thus, in the case of the 12 semidetached dwellings on Earlscourt Avenue mentioned in the text, the building permit implies an estimated cost per unit of $2,000 in 1912 while the assessments for 1913 show a value of $1,500.

61t does not necessarily follow that the assessments will be a good guide to the market value of older buildings. Buildings are not usually reassessed every year. Over a period of decades, market values might depart considerably from the original assessment. Such discrepancies have become especially large since World War II with the inflation of property values that has characterized this period, and also with the declining frequency of reassessment. Such discrepancies are not a particular problem for the proposed method, which employs the assessments only as an indication of the market value of recently-built dwellings.

There may be more than two modal peaks if, for example, the speculative sector is sharply divided into distinct submarkets. In such instances, however, the peak at the low end of the market value distribution is still likely to be the one associated with self-building and a second peak is still likely to occur just above the self-built threshold.

8The value distribution shown in Table 1 appears bimodal because, for convenience, the final value category has been made open-ended. The distribution would "really" be unimodal if an equal class interval were used throughout the value distribution. In the same way, the value distributions of speculative and of all dwellings are, respectively, unimodal and bimodal although apparently bimodal and trimodal.




speculative building (n = 200) is also unimodal, but with a peak just above the threshold in the range of $600-800. Together, these yield an overall value distribution of new homes (n = 300) that is bimodal.

In a research context, of course, we would not know which homes were self- built and the threshold value would have to be determined. If the self-built threshold were determined (correctly) to be $600, then, from the value distribution of all new homes, we would conclude that 97 dwellings, 32 percent of the total, were self- built. We would have obtained an accurate estimate of the contribution of self-building to all new construction. At the same time, there would be quite a number of homes

in the results that it yields. Two types of assessment are possible. The first sets the results against the qualitative evidence available in newspapers and other contemporary reports. It is a rough form of assessment, which is capable of identifying only quite major inconsistencies. The second draws upon evidence for neighboring properties in the tax records and is more sensitive to possible error.

By definition, owner-built homes are one-of-a-kind. They are not likely to be identical to their immediate neighbors. In contrast, many speculatively-built dwellings are part of a larger development of similar homes, where "larger" might mean anything from a semidetached pair to an

TABLE 1

HYPOTHETICAL DISTRIBUTION OF SELF-BUILT HOMES

Number of Units

MARKET VALUE ($) OF RECENTLY-BUILT DWELLINGS

0-199 200-399 400-599 600-799 800-999 1000-1199 1200 + Total

Self-built dwellings 20 40 20 10 5 3 2 100

Other dwellings 2 5 10 40 30 20 93 200

All dwellings 22 45 30 50 35 23 95 300

that we would misclassify. On the one hand, we would have identified 20 (20 percent) of the owner-built dwellings- those valued at more than $600-as the products of speculative activity. On the other hand, 17 of the 97 (18 percent) of the units that we had identified as owner-built were in fact built by contractors. At the individual level, then, there will be errors. At the aggregate level, most of these errors should cancel out to yield a fairly accurate overall picture.

EVALUATION OF THE METHOD

The method outlined above is designed to circumvent the limitations of available evidence. For that reason, it cannot be subjected to an independent "test" of accuracy. It is important, however, that it be assessed so that we might have confidence

entire block or subdivision. As a general rule, we would expect an owner-built home to have a different value than that of its neighbors. In contrast, a speculatively- built home is more likely to have one or more identically-valued neighbors. This is by no means an inflexible rule. By chance alone, some owner-built homes would have the same value as that of one or even two neighbors. This would be especially true of shacks, since assessors might be inclined to give the same assessed value to all one-room structures with no basements. More commonly, some speculatively-built homes would be unique. This was especially true before World War I, when builders typically were small, many building homes at the rate of barely one a year.9

9Warner [19, pp. 126-32] has documented the small scale of the building industry in the middle-class suburbs of Boston in the late nineteenth century. He




Even so, there is an association between the manner of construction and whether homes are one-of-a-kind. In this context, we might expect to find that the incidence of one-of-a-kind homes would be appreciably higher below the self-built threshold than above. Evidence concerning neighboring properties can therefore be used to confirm the location of the self-built threshold.

In principle, a complicating factor is the presence of custom-building, which will almost inevitably produce unique homes. In practice, however, custom-building is largely confined to the upper reaches of the housing market. As a result, we might expect to find that the incidence of unique homes by market value is bimodal, with peaks at the top and the bottom of the market being associated, respectively, with self- and custom building. In this type of situation, it is unlikely that the activity of custom builders would affect our ability to confirm the location of the self-built threshold. Using tax data on adjacent properties, coupled with contemporary reports, it should be possible to evaluate the proposed method. Both forms of assessment will be utilized in the case study of Toronto.

A CASE STUDY OF TORONTO,

1901-1913

At the turn of the century, Toronto was an industrially diversified city of about 200, 000 people. It had been hard hit by the depression of the 1890s. Its population actually fell for a short time, and rose by only 17,000 between 1891 and 1901. After the turn of the century, however, and quite abruptly, it began to grow again. Receiving a massive stream of immigrants, especially of blue-collar workers from England and Scotland, Toronto more than doubled in size in only twelve years. By 1913, with a

population of about 450,000, it ranked second in Canada and about fifteenth in North America as a whole, being roughly on a par with Milwaukee and a little smaller than Detroit. 10

CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNTS OF TORONTO'S

HOUSING MARKET

The growth in population was the basis for a boom in residential construction. This period saw Toronto's first, and modest, apartment boom, but the great majority of new dwelling units were single-family dwellings [5; 9]. The reports of the correspondent for the Labour Gazette, a publication of the federal Department of Labour, allow us to trace the impact of population growth on the construction industry. As early as 1900, the disastrous slump of the 1890s had been replaced by healthy activity. In October of that year, the correspondent, Phillips Thompson, noted that "the building trades are in good shape" (1, 2:90). By the summer of 1902, population growth was causing a "housing problem" as "the lack of accommodation for the steadily increasing population of the city continues to give an impetus to the building trade" (3, 1:17). By 1904, Thompson's monthly reports were harping continuously upon the rapid inflation in rents and the great "scarcity" of dwellings, especially, he observed in December, those for "working men" (5, 6:583).

What Zunz refers to as the "formal" building industry was obviously unwilling to meet this demand for housing from an immigrant population of modest means. Discussing the scarcity of housing for workers, Thompson observed in Novem- ber, 1905, that "this class of investment is not popular with builders, who prefer to erect houses commanding higher rents than the average working man can afford to

also argues that builders followed a limited range of architectural models and that streets looked a great deal more uniform than the actual building process might have suggested. In this situation, many homes that were built independently of one another might end up looking, and being worth, the same.

'l0t is hard to be precise about rankings, since data for other cities are not readily available for 1913, while published data are often for the central city alone. In terms of central city populations, Toronto ranked sixteenth in North America in 1910 (just below Mil- waukee) and twelfth in 1920 (above Milwaukee).




pay" (6, 5:498). One solution was for families to double up and for single people to board. In December of 1905, Thompson observed that "the dwelling-house problem . . . has been somewhat mitigated by . . . the practise of two or more families occupying one house. The renting of rooms is becoming increasingly common" (6, 6:631). The extent to which boarding and rooming was increasing in this period can be more precisely documented from the city directories. The Toronto city directory listed every adult in the city, with the exception of married women who lived with their husbands. It indicates the occu- pancy status of each person listed, dis- tinguishing between householders (i.e., "heads" of household), roomers and boarders, and people who "lived" in the household, usually as employed sons and daugh- ters of the head. 11 By calculating the proportion of all listed persons who were roomers and boarders, it is possible to obtain a rough impression of the significance of doubling-up. More particularly, since the directory was published annually, it is possible to obtain an impression of the trend. In 1900, 11 percent of all listed adults were roomers or boarders. By 1904, this proportion had risen to 14 percent, and it continued to rise steadily until it reached 19 percent in 1913. Evidently, there was a large and steady increase in the incidence of boarding and doubling-up throughout the period in question. 12

But doubling-up absorbed only part of the demand. As early as the summer of 1904, "many new-comers [sic] and others found accommodation in old railway and streetcar sheds" (5, 6:583), and Thompson noted in October that there was "an over- flow of population beyond the city limits

. . . many families still living in tents and temporary shacks, owing to their inability to secure houses within their means" (5, 5:437). References in local newspapers and periodicals make it clear that by 1905, self- building had become a significant factor in residential construction, especially at the bottom end of the market. As a headline in Toronto's Sunday World declared in 1908, "High Rents in Toronto Force Many Peo- ple to Build Their Own Homes on City Outskirts."''3 High levels of immigration and of doubling-up persisted at least until the outbreak of World War I, and available evidence suggests that so, too, did the practice of self-building.

Although a number of contemporary writers recognized that self-building was common, only one made any sort of attempt to suggest its numerical significance. Fortunately, the person in question was well qualified. During the early 1900s, James Mavor was an economist at the Uni- versity of Toronto.'4 He had an academic interest in family budget studies and in 1905-1907 carried out a budget survey in Toronto, which, of necessity, paid attention to the cost and availability of housing. In unpublished notes written in the course of this survey, Mavor, a Scot by birth, wrote that "the working man in steady employment in Toronto owns his house to an extent which is very unusual excepting in this country." He added that "the thrifty man buys a piece of ground and frequently does a considerable amount of finishing of the house, if not even sometimes the building of it, in his leisure time." 15 In his autobiography, written fifteen years later, he emphasized the importance of outright self-building. He recalled that in the early 1900s, "workmen bought ... small lots [for

"The directory uses the concept of household "head," although not the term itself. Unless they lived alone, married women seem not to have been listed even if they were employed outside the home.

'2After 1913, a slackening of immigration, coupled with the onset of war, reduced the amount of doubling up. By 1915, only 13 percent of listed adults were roomers and boarders. All figures reported in this paragraph are estimates based on samples of one thousand adults drawn at random from the Toronto City Directories for each year.

'3Toronto Sunday World (Illustrated Section), De- cember 27, 1908.

141 am grateful to one of the referees for pointing out that from 1906, Mavor taught a course in "Commer- cial Geography." Later, as head of the Department of Political Economy, he hired Harold Innis who in turn brought in Griffith Taylor as the first chairman of the new department of geography at Toronto.

'5James Mavor, Papers, Box 70, "Rents and Hous- ing in Toronto," 1906. University of Toronto, Archives.




about $100], and for $40 or $50 they bought enough lumber to enable them to build houses by means of their own labour. Thus for an expenditure of about $150 a work- man could provide himself with land and a house." He concluded that "in Toronto ... upwards of 10,000 wooden shacks of the sort described were built by workmen for themselves in 1901 and 1902" [14, pp. 373-4].

On the surface, it is difficult to take this estimate seriously. Ten thousand shacks would have housed more than twice the actual increase in Toronto's population in those two years. Of course, Mavor may have been exaggerating in order to make a point. Even ifwe interpret "shack" to mean any self-built home, and cut his number by half, to five thousand, the figure is still implausible. But it is likely that Mavor had his dates slightly wrong. The worst housing crisis, and probably the peak of self- building activity, was in the period 1904/5. Mavor probably meant to refer to these years and not 1901/2, when a housing shortage had not clearly emerged. Fur- ther, if we interpret his statement to mean that five thousand shacks had come into existence by that time-built, that is, during the boom of 1900 to 1905-then the statement might make sense. In those years, the population of Toronto probably increased by about 60, 000 people. 16 At the rate of four to five people per family-fairly typical among the young immigrant families who were arriving in the city and settling the suburbs-then five thousand shacks would have accommodated at least one-third of the population increase and, presumably, have accounted for about one- third of all new construction.

It is unwise to attach too much weight to Mavor's number, for which he evidently relied upon recollected impressions at a distance of 15 or so years. If nothing else, however, and taken in conjunction with the reports of other contemporaries, it indicates that there was more than sufficient self-building in Toronto to justify the application of the method outlined above.

SAMPLING DESIGN

Toronto's construction boom before World War I had got under way by 1901 and showed signs of flagging by the fall of 1913. These years, then, define the frame of reference for this study. The method calls for the creation of a longitudinal data file in which properties are traced back- wards to determine whether they are of recent construction. Over the period 1901-1913, the population of Toronto more than doubled. Since a target sample of about one thousand new dwellings was deemed to be desirable, this entailed an initial sample of about 1, 800 units in 1913.17 With this goal, a 2 percent stratified random sample of residential properties in the tax assessment records was taken for 1913. This sample was obtained by recording information for every fiftieth property listed in the rolls. 18 Coverage was comprehensive and consistent in that the same procedure was used for the city and each of the suburban jurisdictions, six in all.'9 For present purposes, 35 dwelling

'6The population of the city grew by a little under 50,000, but many more were settling in the suburbs. In 1908 and 1909, the city annexed most of the developing parts of these suburbs, thereby gaining 25,000 people. If we assume that these suburban areas contained only a few thousand people in 1900, and experienced a steady amount of growth between 1900 and 1908/9, then we arrive at an estimated increase in the suburbs of about ten thousand between 1900 and 1905.

17A reliable estimate of the rate of self-building in Toronto as a whole could have been derived from a smaller sample. In view of the experimental nature of the method, however, it was thought to be desirable to take a larger sample.

'8Since there is no periodicity in the listing of properties in the assessments, there is no reason to believe that this sampling procedure should have introduced bias. It may be treated as random.

'9The suburban jurisdictions in question were the Townships of York, Etobicoke and Scarborough, the Villages of North and East Toronto, and the Town of West Toronto Junction. The original historical records of the townships are now located, respectively, in the City Clerk's offices of the municipalities of York, Etobicoke and Scarborough. Remaining records, along with those for the city itself, are available on microfilm in the archives of the city of Toronto.




TABLE 2

TYPES OF HOMES BUILT IN TORONTO, 1901-1913

Assessed building Number of Units Percent of units one-of-a-kind' Percent distribution value($) (a) (b) (a) (b) (a) (b)

0-999 171 273 56 62 42 37

1000-1999 134 263 25 33 33 36

2000-2999 72 133 40 41 18 18

Over3000 26 61 85 61 7 9

TOTAL 403 730 45 47 100 100

(a): Dwellings built 1901-1907

(b): Dwellings built 1908-1913

'A one-of-a-kind home is defined as one that has a different assessed value than that of either of its immediate neighbors.

Source: Longitudinal sample of property assessment records for city of Toronto and urbanized districts of adjacent suburbs.

units within apartment buildings were dropped.20 This procedure yielded a total of 1,785 units distributed evenly across the entire urban area of Toronto in 1913. When traced back, 653 of these units were found to have been in existence in 1901. The remainder, 1,132 units, or 63 percent of the total sample, were new, having been built between 1901 and 1913.

There are good reasons to believe that the self-built threshold changes over time, with variations in the costs of construction. The period in question saw a rapid increase in rents, house prices and, to a lesser extent, construction costs [1]. The threshold value in 1913 was appreciably higher than in 1901, and this increase to some extent undermines the method. Accordingly, it was decided to divide the period into two, with an additional sample being taken in 1907. In this manner, it became possible to determine whether "new" properties had been built in 1901-1907 or in 1908-1913. As a result, it also became feasible to develop and apply two threshold values, one for the earlier period and one for the later.

DETERMINING THE SELF-BUILT THRESHOLD

A field survey was undertaken to identify cheap speculative housing built in the

20Although most apartment buildings in this period were built for the middle and upper classes, some units, being quite small, would have been valued below the self-built threshold (cf. Dennis [5]). They might have been counted, erroneously, as self-built units.

study period. Assessment records were used to provide information on assessed values. The cheapest properties identified in this manner were a row of two-story two- bedroom homes built in 1908 of wood frame construction with a brick veneer. They were valued in the assessments at $1,050 each. This suggested a rather lower value for the self-built threshold in that year, which happened to be roughly the midpoint of the study period.

The figure of $1,000 was taken as an initial, rough estimate of the self-built threshold for the whole period. Of the 403 homes built between 1901 and 1907, 171 (42 percent) were valued at less than $1,000 in 1913 (Table 2). The equivalent percentage for the latter half of the study period was 37 percent. The evidence on the distribution of one-of-a-kind homes provided broad confirmation that many of the properties assessed at less than $1,000 had been owner-built. One-of-a-kind dwellings were defined as those that had an assessed value that differed by more than one percent from that of either neighbor. As expected, their distribution by assessed value was markedly bimodal, and for homes built in both periods (Table 2). For example, among all dwellings built between 1901 and 1907, an average of 45 percent were unique. This proportion was highest among the most expensive homes, reach- ing 85 percent among those worth more than $3,000. Accounting for only 7 percent of all new construction, many of these sub-




stantial homes were custom-built. There was a lower but still noteworthy peak of 56 percent among those valued at under $1,000. This confirms the existence of substantial self-building in this price range, especially when contrasted with the much lower incidence of one-of-a-kind homes (25

pected, the distribution of homes by assessed value is clearly bimodal. There is a broad peak in the range of $150-449, which can be interpreted as containing the main concentration of self-built homes, many of them shacks. There is a narrower peak in the range $600-750, which can be inter-

TABLE 3

SEL.F -BUII.DINC IN TORONTO, 1901-1907 (SELF-BUILT[THRESHOLD = $600)

DWELLING UNITS BUILT 1901-1907

Assessed building Percent Cumulative Percent that are Category value in 1907 ($) Number of total percent one-of-a-kind'

1 0-149 22 5.5 5.5 64

2 150-299 36 8.9 14.4 81

3 300-449 41 10.2 24.6 66

4 450-599 19 4.7 29.3 42

5 600-749 31 7.7 37.0 29

6 750-899 13 3.2 40.2 23

900+ 241 59.8 100 36

Total 403 100 45


Source: See Table 2.

percent) in the $1,000-1,999 range. The fact that this peak is substantially below that for the top price range, however, suggests that quite a number of speculative homes were built for less than $1,000. This in turn implies that, especially in the early part of the study period, the threshold value itself was under $1,000.

To determine more accurately where the threshold fell in each study period, a finer set of value categories was employed. This time, the two halves of the study period were treated separately (Tables 3 and 4). Different value categories were employed for the two periods. Instead of using for all properties the assessed values recorded in 1913, moreover, values reported in the 1907 assessments were used for the homes built 1901-7, while 1913 values were used only for those built 1908-1913.

The evidence of the assessments suggests very strongly that the self-built threshold in the first half of the study period was about $600. As might be ex-

preted in terms of a clustering of speculative activity just above the self-built threshold. Such interpretations are supported by the incidence of one-of-a-kind homes. Up to $900, the incidence of unique homes declines fairly steadily.2' It reaches a high of 81 percent in the range $150-299, a level that is comparable to that found among custom-built homes at the top end of the market. It falls below 30 percent above $600, and indeed the incidence of one-of- a-kind homes in the range $600-900 is about the same as it is among homes valued $1,000-1,999.

With equal consistency, the assessments indicate that, in fact, the self-built threshold had risen to about $1,000 by the latter

21The exception is in the lowest value category, $0-150. This does not indicate the presence of speculative activity. Rather, it reflects a clustering of shack-building activity at the very bottom of the market. One room, comprising four walls and a roof, was quite common and typically assessed at the same value, whoever built it.



TIlE URBAN HOUSING MARKET 13

half of the period. The distribution of homes built 1908-1913 is again bimodal (Table 4). This time, the lower peak is in the very bottom value category, which for this later period is defined as $0-249. A second peak occurs just above $1,000. Again, the incidence of one-of-a-kind homes confirms the point. This time, the proportion of unique homes does not fall steadily with increasing value. It is highest in the bottom value range (70 percent), however and, most significantly, it drops very sharply above $1,000 from 63 percent to 38 percent.

Given that self-building certainly oc- curred above the self-built threshold throughout the period of study, the evidence concerning the distribution of homes by value category and that concerning the incidence of one-of-a-kind homes are strik- ingly consistent. Together, they confirm that the "self-built threshold" is concep- tually meaningful and, just as important, amenable to measurement from available evidence.

THE CONTRIBUTION OF SELF-BUILDING TO

NEW CONSTRUCTION

Using the different self-built thresholds for the two halves of the study period, it is a

simple matter to estimate the contribution of self-building to new construction. The threshold figure of $600 suggests that self- building accounted for 29.3 percent of all new construction in the period 1901-1907 (Table 3). The threshold figure of $1,000 indicates an even higher rate of self- building, 37.4 percent, in the years 1907-1913 (Table 4). On this basis, we might conclude that a little over one-third (34.5 percent) of all dwellings erected in the study period were owner-built (Table 5). This corresponds quite well with the interpretation of James Mavor's figure that was suggested above.

Although the evidence of the assessments is consistent and strongly indicative, questions can be raised about whether the threshold values have been identified correctly. One of the merits of the method outlined here is that it is possible to derive different estimates by varying the threshold values. In the case of Toronto, it is noteworthy that, even if the thresholds are reduced by 25 percent, to $450 and $750, respectively, the estimated rate of self- building remains high (29.4 percent) (Table 5). This is because relatively few homes were built just below the estimated threshold values. Indeed, if the thresholds are halved, to $300 and $500-ridiculously low

TABLE 4

SEILF-BUILDING IN TORONTO, 1908-1913 (SELF-BUILT THRESHOI.D = $1000)


Assessed building Percent Cumulative Percent that are Category value in 1913 ($) Number of total percent one-of-a-kind'

1 0-249 93 12.7 12.7 70

2 250-499 67 9.2 22.0 60

3 500-749 75 10.3 32.3 52

4 750-999 38 5.2 37.5 63

5 1000-1249 76 10.4 47.8 38

6 1250-1499 70 9.6 57.3 33

1500+ 311 42.6 I() 39

Total 730 100 47





14 ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

TABLE 5

SELF-BUILDING IN TORONTO, 1901-1913 (SELF-BUILTTHRESHOLD 1901-1907 = $600; 1907-1913 = $1000)


Assessed building Percent Cumulative Percent that are Category value ($) Number of total percent one-of-a-kind'

1907 1913

1 0-149 0-249 115 10.2 10.2 69

2 150-299 250-499 103 9.1 19.2 67

3 300-449 500-749 116 10.3 29.4 57

4 450-599 750-999 57 5.0 34.5 56

5 600-749 1000-1249 107 9.4 44.0 35

6 750-899 1250-1499 83 7.3 51.3 31

900+ 1500+ 552 48.7 100 39

Total 1133 100 47



figures even in the context of the time-we would conclude that about one-fifth of homes were self-built. It is evident that, during a major period of growth and construction, a substantial minority of homes in Toronto were built within what Zunz calls the "informal economy," by owners for their own use.

THE GEOGRAPHY OF SELF-BUILDING

By all accounts, self-building was concentrated in the suburbs. Of course, this is where most new construction took place. For two reasons, however, it seems that owner-built homes were even more geographically peripheral than other new homes. First, the most inconvenient loca- tions and therefore the cheapest land were at the far urban fringe. As Wilfrid Dinnick, the president of Toronto's largest land development company, observed in (about) 1910: "just beyond the city boundaries are large areas of land, unattractive to the builder who requires all conveniences such as water and sewage, and naturally much lower in price. "22 Recognizing that these suburbs were not served by transit, Din- nick added that "new districts are being

built up by the workingmen who seem to be willing to cover an extra ten minutes walk to secure a reasonable reduction in the cost of vacant land." Self-builders usually had low incomes and little in the way of savings. Hundreds, even thousands, were able to afford $150 to build a shack on a far suburban lot, but many fewer could have built the same home closer in.

A second factor pushing owner-builders into the suburbs was building regulations [10]. The city of Toronto had regulated construction since the 1870s. Until 1904, the stringency of these regulations varied by location within the city and it is not clear how well they were enforced. 23 In 1904, a fire in the core area prompted the munici- pality to introduce a new by-law that set higher standards and extended the "brick limits" within which wood frame construction was prohibited. Within six months, a chorus of complaint had arisen. A letter to the Toronto Evening Telegram in June, 1905, for example, argued that the new by-law had made it more difficult for

22Dinnick Papers, Archives of Ontario, MU 919. "Toronto Real Estate," undated, untitled, and un- paginated manuscript.

23Saywell [15, p. 96] quotes the City Commissioner as saying that in the 1890s, "permits issued are only for erections within fire limits, which is the older part of the City largely built up years ago, while the outlying districts beyond the fire limits are the parts where there has been during the past five years a very large number of buildings erected each year."




speculative or self-builders to construct cheap homes within the city [23]. The result was to push owner-builders into the suburbs. In October, 1905, Phillips Thomp- son noted in the Labour Gazette that "many working men are building small houses for themselves beyond the city limits, to escape the stringent regulations forbidding the erection of frame buildings within the city" (6, 4:388).

In the suburbs, potential builders could build what they chose. Even in the 1920s, when the suburban townships and villages began to require permits, "when someone wanted to build a house, a store, a stable, or even a small factory, he just built it wher- ever he took the notion to build it" [3, p. 48]. A partial exception was the town of West Toronto Junction, an industrial satellite to the northwest of Toronto [8; 17] (Figure 1). By 1907, West Toronto had been divided into three sections for building purposes. Two were regulated and one was not and, as a correspondent for the Toronto News observed in that year, the absence of regulation accounted for the fact that "fully one half' of new construction was taking place in the unrestricted area [12]. The correspondent added that even more dwellings, amounting to "hundreds of houses," were "dotted about" beyond town boundaries.

To bring unregulated areas under greater control, the city pursued an active policy of annexation. In his inaugural address of 1908, the Mayor observed that "it might be economy to make further addi- tions to our territory with a view to improv- ing the sanitary condition of the outlying districts, and with a view to controlling the erection of buildings . . . . As a result, West Toronto Junction, along with North Toronto, the Village of East Toronto, and parts of York Township to the northwest and northeast, was incorporated into the city and brought under tighter regulation (Figure 1). Even so, accessible but unregulated districts, notably in York Township and southern Etobicoke, remained. Of- fered carte blanche, owner-builders were active in suburban districts all around the city. By 1907, B. B. Cooke, writing in the

Toronto Globe, noted with a flourish that "like a straggling procession of ill-shapen, ill-clad pilgrims journeying towards a Mecca of things they hope to be, Shack- lands' dwellings extend around Toronto ... There is scarcely a terminating car line in the city but taps the shacklands" [2].

The sampling design used in the present study makes it possible to confirm the impression of contemporaries that shack- towns ringed Toronto and that they were concentrated outside the city's limits. Stratified to ensure proportional rep- resentation from all areas of the city, and within the limits imposed by sample size, this sample can provide estimates of self- building activity in several residential rings. If these estimates support the impressions of contemporaries with respect to the location of self-building, the validity of the proposed method would receive further confirmation.

The years before World War I were the last when the city of Toronto pursued an aggressive policy of annexation. Over the period as a whole, about 14 percent of the population increase of the city can be attributed to annexation [9, Table 1]. About three-fifths of the annexed populations were brought into the city in 1908/9 alone. The increase in the land area of the city was much greater, and by 1913 the city boundary had been extended considerably in almost all directions. In terms of location and also of prevailing building regulations, it is useful to distinguish three broad rings of development: areas that lay within the city of Toronto in 1901, suburban areas that were annexed 1901-1913, and outer suburban districts that remained beyond city limits. Most city districts were always subject to building regulations of some kind; most annexed suburbs came under regulation for the first time within the study period; outer suburbs were not regulated at all. For present purposes, the timing of the major annexations is convenient in that it coincides quite closely with the midpoint of the longitudinal sample. Annexed suburbs typically lay outside the city in the first half of the study period but lay inside the city in the second half. Thus it is possi-




TABLE 6

THE GEOGRAPHY OF NEW CONSTRUCTION IN TORONTO, 1901-1913

RESIDENTIAL RING'

I II III IV V Total

Number of dwelling units in 1901 404 179 61 8 1 653

Number of dwelling units built: 1901-1907 43 141 149 36 32 401 1908-1913 47 104 257 238 85 731

1901-1913 90 245 406 274 117 1132

Numberofdwellingunitsin 1913 494 424 467 282 118 1785

Percent distribution 28 24 26 16 7 101

Proportion of 1913 units built 1901-1913 18 58 87 97 99 63

'Ring I: districts lying within the city and substantially (>75%) developed by 1901; Ring II: districts lying within the city and partly (25-75%) developed by 1901; Ring III: districts lying within the city and mainly (>75%) developed 1901-1913; Ring IV: suburbs annexed by the city of Toronto, 1901-1913; Ring V: suburban areas in 1913.


ble, within this ring, to examine the impact of changes in building regulation.

It is possible and desirable to make rather finer geographical distinctions. The three broad rings were very unequal in size. Even in 1913, 77 percent of all housing units in the urban area lay within the limits of the city as they had existed in 1901. The newly annexed suburbs accounted for 16 percent of all housing units and the outer suburbs for barely 7 percent. In 1901, the city contained a good deal of vacant land and most of the growth of the next twelve years, 65 percent of all new dwelling units in fact, was accommodated within these old city limits. Inevitably, the rate of growth varied enormously within the city. Areas located close to the old city limits were virgin territory and grew as rapidly as parts of the suburbs beyond. Accordingly, it is useful to distinguish three rings within the city as it existed in 1901. First, there were areas that were essentially developed by 1901. In "Ring 1," new construction in the period 1901-1913 accounted for less than 25 percent of all the housing units that existed in 1913 (Table 6). Surrounding this core was a second ring of partly-developed districts. Here, new growth and old were very roughly equal in importance (25-75 percent of either). Towards the old city limits lay the "Ring 3" districts, where recent construction ac-

counted for more than 75 percent of all dwellings in 1913.24 It happens that these three rings were roughly equal in size by 1913, accounting, respectively, for 28, 24 and 26 percent of all dwellings in the urban area (Table 6). In this manner, it is possible to identify a total of 5 residential rings, with the annexed suburbs making up "Ring 4" and the outer suburbs "Ring 5."

As we might expect, self-building was concentrated in the two suburban rings. Over the study period as a whole, almost exactly two-thirds (65 percent) of all self- building in this period was located in these two rings (Table 7). More significantly, the contribution of self-building to new construction was also highest in these suburban areas. Just over half of all new construction in the annexed suburbs (Ring 4) took the form of owner-building, and in the outer suburbs this proportion exceeded 90

24The cutoff figures of 25 percent and 75 percent are not arbitrary. The smallest areas for which it was possible to obtain reliable estimates of the contribution of new construction to total dwellings in 1913 were ward divisions. In 1913, there were 30 ward divisions that lay within the old city limits, of which seven were primarily non-residential. The distribution of ward divisions by rate of growth 1901-13 was distinctly trimodal, with modal peaks in the ranges of 0-10 percent, 50-59 percent, and 90-99 percent. In a real sense, there were three "types" of areas within the old city limits: developed, partly developed, and undeveloped in 1901.




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percent (Table 7; Figure 1). Within the city, it is noteworthy that rates of self- building were a little higher at the very center (Ring 1) than in the surrounding residential rings. Contemporary reformers noted the existence of slum conditions in the inner districts, and notably "the Ward." Their photographs reveal the presence of a number of shacks built on back alleys and in the back yards of more substantial, brick dwellings. It is probable that our method is managing to pick these out. With this minor exception, however, it is clear that owner-building was very much a suburban phenomenon.

The evidence for the annexed suburbs (Ring 4) indicates strongly that municipal regulation, or the lack thereof, was a critical factor. In the first half of the study period, 1901-7, this ring lay outside city limits. In these years, the rate of self- building (75 percent) was almost as high as in the outer suburbs of Ring 5 (91 percent) (Table 7). The difference can probably be attributed to higher land costs in Ring 4. For most of the second half of our study period, 1908-13, districts in Ring 4 now lay within city limits and were subject to the city's building regulations. The rate of self- building dropped to 49 percent, while the equivalent rate in Ring 5 actually increased to 94 percent. Throughout the period, rates of self-building in the fringe districts

of the city (Ring 3) were consistently low, at around 16 percent. Evidently, owner- builders were attracted not only by cheap land but also by the absence of regulation. As unregulated districts were brought under greater control, owner-builders had to move further out, or find alternative means of housing themselves.

This interpretation is supported by evidence concerning variations in the assessed values of owner-built properties by residential ring (Table 8). Not only were rates of self-building highest in the suburbs, but the homes built there were especially cheap. In the period 1901-07, for example, self-built homes in Ring 5 were assessed, on the average, at only $280, compared with an average of $404 for all owner-built homes in the urban area as a whole. It is noteworthy that owner-built homes in Ring 4, which had been cheaper than the average between 1901 and 1907, became more expensive than the average in the next six years. This underlines the importance of building regulations in determining not only the rate of self-building but also the types of homes that owner-builders could construct.

DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS

The evidence for Toronto provides strong support for the research method

TABLE 7

GEOGRAPHY OF SELF-BUILD)INGI IN TORONTO, 1901-1913

RESIDENTIAL RING2

Total I 11 III IV V %

Percentage distribution of self-built dwelling units

1901-1907 9 25 19 23 25 100 118

1908-1913 5 7 16 43 29 100 273

1901-1913 6 12 17 37 28 100 391

Percentage contribution of self-building to all new dwelling construction

1901-1907 26 21 15 75 91 29 401

1908-1913 28 18 17 49 94 37 731

1901-1913 27 20 16 52 93 35 1132

'For definition see text.

2For explanation see Table 6.





TABLE 8

THE VALUE OF SELF-BUILT HOMES1 IN TORONTO, 1901-1913

Average assessed value ($) of self-built dwellings2

RESIDENTIAL RING3

I II III IV V Total

1901-1907 293 308 325 245 227 275

1908-1913 454 533 493 428 280 404

Index

1901-1907 106 112 118 89 83 100

1908-1913 112 132 122 106 69 100

'For definition, see text.

2Dwellings only, excluding land.

3For explanation, see Table 6.


outlined here. In particular, it indicates that the concept of a "self-built threshold" is meaningful. Data on the distribution of assessed values point to the existence of a clear threshold market value below which merchant builders were largely inactive. Independent confirmation of the level of this threshold is provided by the incidence of the one-of-a-kind homes with which self- building is especially associated. The re- sulting estimates of the rate of self-building are consistent with the reports of contemporaries. In particular, a consideration of the geography of self-building confirms that owner-builders were most active in the suburbs and that here the absence of municipal regulation played an important -perhaps even a critical-permissive role.

The application of this method suggests that self-building played a major role in the housing market in Toronto before World War I, accounting for about one-third of all new construction between 1901 and 1913. To determine whether Toronto was excep- tional, and in what degree, we will need to undertake detailed case studies that employ a method similar to the one proposed here. The present method might be applied in any city where property assessment records have survived for the entire urban area, and where (as was usual) land and buildings were assessed separately. It requires the construction of a longitudinal property file in order to identify dwellings that were recently built. For that reason, it

can most conveniently be applied in situations where urban growth is rapid. Other- wise, it will be necessary to obtain a very large initial sample in order to secure enough new dwellings so that it becomes possible to make a reliable estimate of the rate of self-building.

It is not clear how easily this method can be applied in situations where the rate of self-building was below, say, five percent. Field surveys can establish a broad, max- imum value for the self-built threshold, but, judging from my experience in Toronto, the evidence on modal peaks in assessed values and one-of-a-kind homes is very valuable in refining this initial estimate. Where, as in Toronto, there were many owner-built homes, this procedure is straightforward and, apparently, un- problematic. Where owner-built homes are quite rare, however, modal peaks may not prove to be a very good guide. In such situations, there is a place for more detailed case histories of specific properties and/or districts. Such case studies might draw upon building permits and insurance plans, as well as the assessments, in order to identify the relevant threshold values. Difficulties will also arise in situations where many owner-built homes were con- structed just below the threshold value. In Toronto, it is clear that very many owner- built homes were just shacks. These stand out in the distribution of homes by assessed value. If most owner-builders produced




slightly more substantial homes, then the value distribution of homes may be unimodal. The peak would probably be quite broad and might straddle the threshold value. In such situations, information per- taining to the incidence of one-of-a-kind homes might prove to be critical in determining the threshold value.

A potential problem with this method is that it assumes that speculative and owner- building are quite different forms of construction. In principle, the distinction is between those who built for their own consumption as opposed to those who built in order to sell. In practice, the boundaries were sometimes blurred. A small contract builder might occupy the home he had just built until he had built another, enabling him to move on and sell. An accomplished owner-builder might decide that he could do better a second time around, capitaliz- ing upon his sweat equity in the process. Indeed, some owner-builders came to real- ize that building could be profitable and became professionals. Even those who built for their own use could have employed contractors to do skilled or heavy work. In these ways, a neat distinction between do-it-yourself and professionally- built homes might break down. From detailed research undertaken in the district of Earlscourt, it appears that "pure" self- building was in fact very common in Toronto [11]. In this situation, it is reasonable to assume a clear distinction between the speculative and owner-built home. But in situations where more mixed building strategies were predominant, the results of the proposed method would need to be interpreted with particular care.

An interesting question that arises from the evidence reported here concerns the fate of owner-built homes. This is especially interesting in the Toronto case, since it appears that, at the suburban fringe, districts like Earlscourt were largely developed in this manner. The presump- tion among most researchers has been that, over time, properties deteriorate and filter down. In Toronto, the units in the outer- most ring were very modest and left little room for filtering down. Were they main-

tained, improved, neglected, or replaced in subsequent years? The time frame of the present study is too narrow to allow us to answer this question. Preliminary results for Earlscourt suggest that homes that were owner-built before World War I were improved and replaced in the 1910s and 1920s, but that their occupants ran into difficulties in the 1930s [10]. Owner-built homes were hostages to fortune. Their fate depended upon the fluctuating fortunes of the local economy.

Even in the best of situations, the proposed method is quite demanding, notably in terms of the construction of a longitudinal data file. The effort is worthwhile, however, for it can tell us much about one of the most neglected aspects of the housing market in North American cities over the past century. In the process, it raises questions about the accuracy and usefulness of the- oretical models that assume that housing is produced for profit and sold for household consumption. Such models, from Burgess onwards, have been the norm. They imply that household income-what Vance [18, p. 322] terms "the means test"-has been the critical determinant of how and where people live. Along these lines, it has been said that, prior to World War II, only affluent households could afford a new suburban home. The evidence on the incidence of self-building in the Toronto suburbs contradicts this argument. It points to the existence of a different construction process. It was a process in which production and consumption were one, and where sweat equity played a role that was the equal of the earned dollar.

LITERATURE CITED

1. Chambers, E. J. "A New Measure of the Rental Cost of Housing in Toronto, 1890-1914," Histoire sociale/Social History, 17 (1984), pp. 165-74.

2. Cooke, R. R. "A Visit to Shackland in Toronto's Suburbs," The Globe, November 9, 1907.

3. Davidson, T. The Golden Years of East York. Toronto: Centennial College Press, 1976.

4. Dennis, R. Landlords and Rented Housing in Toronto, 1885-1914. Toronto: University of Toronto, Centre for Urban and Community Stud- ies, Research Paper 162, 1987.




5. Dennis, R. Toronto's First Apartment-House Boom. An Historical Geography, 1900-1920. Toronto: University of Toronto, Centre for Urban and Community Studies, Research Paper No. 177, 1989.

6. Dyos, H. J. Victorian Suburb. A Study of the Growth of Camberwell. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1961.

7. Cans, H. J. The Levittowners. New York: Pan- theon, 1967.

8. Garland, G. D. "Suburbanization and the Transi- tion to Monopoly Capitalism." Unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Toronto, 1978.

9. Harris, R. "Household Work Strategies and Sub- urban Homeownership in Toronto, 1899-1913," Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 8 (1990), pp. 97-121.

10. Harris, R. "The Impact of Building Regulations on Residential Development in Toronto, 1900-1940." Unpublished paper, Department of Geography, McMaster University, 1990.

11. Harris, R. "Livin' Quiet in Little Britain: The Making of an Unplanned Working-Class Suburb of Toronto, 1909-1931. " Unpublished paper, De- partment of Geography, McMaster University, 1990.

12. "House Scarcity at Junction Compels Numerous Workmen to Travel Long Distances," The News, May 8, 1907.

13. "Housing and Homes," Conservation of Life, 1, 2 (1914), pp. 32-3.

14. Mavor, J. My Windows on the Street of the World. London: Dent, 1923.

15. Saywell, J. T. Housing Canadians. Essays on the History of Residential Construction in Canada. Ottawa: Economic Council of Canada, Discussion Paper No. 24, 1975.

16. Simon, R. D. "City Building Process: Housing and Services in New Milwaukee Neighborhoods 1880-1910, " Transactions of the American Philo- sophical Society, 68 (1978), pp. 5-64.

17. Thomas, S. M. "Railway Satellite: West Toronto Junction, 1884-1909." Unpublished M.A. thesis, York University, 1973.

18. Vance, J. E. "Housing the Worker: The Employ- ment Linkage as a Force in Urban Structure," Economic Geography, 42 (1966), pp. 294-325.

19. Warner, S. B. Streetcar Suburbs. The Process of Growth in Boston 1870-1900. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962.

20. Weaver, J. "From Land Assembly to Social Matu- rity. The Suburban Life of Westdale (Hamilton), Ontario, 1911-1951," Histoire socialelSocial His- tory, 11 (1978), pp. 411-40.

21. Weiss, M. The Rise of the Community Builders. New York: Columbia University Press, 1987.

22. Whitten, R. and T. Adams. Neighborhoods of Small Homes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer- sity Press, 1931.

23. "Why Houses Come High," Toronto Evening Telegram, June 30, 1905.

24. Zunz, 0. The Changing Face of Inequality. Urba- nization, Industrial Development and Immi- grants in Detroit, 1880-1920. Chicago: Univer- sity of Chicago Press, 1982.



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Self-Building in the Urban Housing Market

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