Wartime rooms were not free

Re: “Helps: Could billeting of homeless ease crisis?” June 14. Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps seems unaware of the situation with respect to Second World War housing of the homeless who came to Victoria to help with the war effort. First, during that period, homeless persons were usually identified as vagrants and received little public sympathy.

Those who came here to work were, for the most part, industrious types who had survived several years of constraints caused by the Great Depression, as well as years of crop failures on the prairies, and were skilled in essential war-related trades, or were too old, too young or not medically fit for military service.

My parents moved to Victoria from a rented five-room house in Vancouver that housed all nine of us to a rented house here that had two spare bedrooms, which was more than adequate, since three of my brothers joined the army and one sister married a solder and went to Ontario. In keeping with the situation, those spare rooms were rented out to young married servicemen who wished to be together with their wives as long as possible before being sent overseas.

I am not certain of what their rent to my parents was, but I doubt if it was more than $5 a week, which included heat, electricity and water (we had no phone). It was a small amount, but the rooms were not free, as suggested by Helps.

Today’s housing problems are as different to what was as chalk is to cheese. David Smith Victoria