However, rent control is and always has been a selective matter, operating only in those communities which have a shortage of rental housing. During the last half of 1950, the Office of the Housing Expediter made surveys throughout the country which indicated that the supply of rental housing was still extremely tight in many communities. In 100 of the largest cities the Office of the Housing Expediter contacted 1,251 leading realtors and apartment house and project managers in order to determine how many rental vacancies they had. In the 231,720 units under their control they reported only 1,516 rental vacancies. This represents a vacancy factor of less than two-thirds of 1 percent.

The existence of a house in a resort area does nothing to solve the housing shortage in Gary, Ind.; San Diego, Calif., or Norfolk, Va. Housing shortages are localized situations, but they have a direct bearing on the national welfare. Federal rent controls, applied in areas of the greatest shortages, can do much to restrain the inflationary dangers produced by these shortages.

FAIR DEALING FOR THE LANDLORDS

Our association is fully aware of the practical problem of guaranteeing a fair return to landlords of home rental properties. With this thought in mind, and in consideration of the "vacancy" problem upon which I have touched, we checked into the records to discover for ourselves whether or not the landlords of this Nation were being fairly dealt with under present rent controls. Our research into this area has convinced us that the landlords are receiving an adequate and fair return upon their properties as witness the following facts;

Owners of buildings containing more than five units of rental housing have increased their net operating income (before depreciation) by 44 percent and for smaller structures by 34 percent over 1939, a recent survey made by the Office of the Housing Expediter (OHE) reveals.

The survey was based on actual examination of the records of 1,535 large buildings with 38,652 units and 2,165 smaller buildings containing 4,141 units.

Ninety-five percent of the buildings containing 98 percent of the total units showed an increase in rents since controls were established. A million rent increases have been granted by the Office of the Housing Expediter during the calendar year 1950.

RENT CONTROLS AND THE SITUATION AROUND MILITARY CAMPS

This problem will cause our defense effort to lag seriously unless present controls are continued and in some respects strengthened.

Many of our association members are vitally concerned with this problem because they know from sad experience how the morale of families of service personnel can seriously affect the serviceman him self. To cite only two human-interest stories which have reached us will indicate the grave responsibility which devolves upon the Congress to grant the necessary protectoin called for in this bill.

From Battle Creek, Mich., comes this report from a wife of a wounded veteran of the Korean campaign:

I want to tell about the really outrageous prices the wounded men's families here are having to pay for apartments and living quarters. I will tell you about just one case, and it is just one among many. Some are even worse.

I myself am trying to find an apartment, as at the present time, I'm living in a sleeping room. Yesterday, I called about an apartment I saw advertised in the paper. "Children welcome," it said.

The landlady immediately asked me if I had any children. When I told her I had a son, she said, "Well, I have taken a month's rent from another woman, but it was with the understanding that if I found someone better who wanted the apartment I could refund the money." The other woman had three children and I had one, which made me a better prospect. The other woman's husband was also a war casualty, and Heaven knows she needs the apartment with her three children more than I do.

The apartment for which these service wives were competing was two rooms, no bath, no sink, and rented for $60 per month.

Here is the story of the wife of a soldier at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo.:

I joined my husband at Fort Leonard Wood and rented a one-room lighthousekeeping unit for which I pay $45 per month. My husband is a veteran, saw service in Korea, and has a salary of $117 per month. After paying our rent, it is impossible for us to maintain a respectable standard of living. * * * meet my financial obligations, it has become necessary for me to seek employment, thereby forcing me to send my small son to my parents.

to

Furthermore, our studies indicate that more than 200 military installations, either reactivated or on the list for reactivation, are located in areas where there is no rent control.

In many of these areas there is already an acute shortage of housing. San Diego, Calif., has need of an additional 20,000 units, according to Mayor Harley E. Knox.

Mr. MULTER. May I interpolate that Mayor Knox has announced that he is not a candidate for reelection; so that statement is not prompted by a desire to catch votes.

Mr. COLE. Reelection for what?

Mr. MULTER. Mayor of the city of San Diego.

Mr. SCHIFF. A Marine Corps survey of 1,078 military families in the vicinity of Quantico, Va., disclosed extremely high rents for a poor average of accommodation.

Near Camp LeJeune, in North Carolina, the housing shortage is acute, with much of the available housing being of substandard types. The mayor of Wilmington, N. C., reported that, though Wilmington is practically 50 miles from Camp Lejeune, more than 1,500 families have moved in, and hundreds more would like to get accommodations. City Manager C. A. Harrell, of Norfolk, Va., reported:

* * *

We find ourselves still struggling with yesterday's construction needs at the very time that bold, aggressive action is needed to meet today's crisis. Where the defense effort brings about large increases of population, there is vital need for additional housing and supporting services. Housing is still inadequate in many cities. Yet, where new populations engulf municipalities, homes will

have to be made available.

Brig. Gen. Colby M. Myers, representing the Department of Defense, told the House Banking and Currency Committee:

The availability of living units in the vicinity of defense plants or military installations will tend to stabilize personnel in these areas. The Department of Defense considers that the stabilization of the defense worker is vital to the success of this country's industrial and military mobilization program.

* * * the Air Force, to which I am assigned, has lost much of its potential combat effectiveness during the interim period from the end of the last war to the present time because of the loss of personnel due to the lack of family housing units available to them in the vicinity of our bases. This loss must now be replaced at the expense of time and under the stress of emergency.

83473-51-pt. 3- -30

Quotations are from testimony on the defense-housing bill before the House Banking and Currency Committee, 1951.

THE IMPORTANCE OF EVICTION CONTROL

On May 15, some 90 masked tenants appeared before the Wisconsin Legislative Committee seeking rent control, according to newspaper reports. They gave as their reason for wearing masks the fear that they would be evicted if their identities were revealed. While they no doubt dramatized their point to make a case, there is a strong feeling on the part of tenants that without eviction controls they have no protection when they report overcharges.

The provisions giving the Office of the Housing Expediter authority to establish eviction controls is vital to the good administration of rent control. The provision relating to eviction in the proposed legislation provides ample ground for eviction where warranted without allowing evictions to be used as a means for collecting overceiling rent, or to keep tenants from reporting violations, or to take revenge on a tenant who has met his legal obligations and seeks to resist the imposition of illegal ones.

THE PROBLEM OF DECONTROL AND RECONTROL

Our association urges that the Congress accept a modification of the present law which would enable the President or his designated agent to recontrol any accommodations which he decontrols and to establish maximum rents for housing accommodations which are not presently under control. We urge that this authority be given to him. because of the many hardships created around the Nation due to unfortunate and untimely rent decontrols.

CONCLUSION

It is our firm conviction, based upon the facts as we have been able to gather from around the Nation, that H. R. 3871 should be affirmatively acted upon by the House Banking and Currency Committee and that title IV-A, "Rent Stabilization," in particular needs and deserves the support of the committee.

We have tried briefly to set forth our reasons for soliciting your support. We realize that the American people, under normal conditions, should not be sub ected to the kinds of controls which lead to regimentation. We are not that kind of Nation.

However, these are not normal conditions and normal times under which we are living. On the contrary, our way of life, already seriously threatened, will become worse, almost irretrievable, unless we act quickly in our own defense. Thus the temporary economic controls envisioned under H. R. 3871 can well prove to be our first line of defense in our struggle to maintain our democratic form of government.

The CHAIRMAN. Are there any questions?

Mr. WOLCOTT. Mr. Schiff, in your conclusions, you say "We have tried to briefly set forth our reasons for soliciting your support."

I assume that one of the reasons—and I am not going to ask you to answer this, but I merely want to comment upon it-I assume

that you predicate your reasons for asking for continuance of rent controls on the statement which you read, quoting the Bureau of Labor Statistics with respect to the increase in rents.

The average rise in rents, it says, since mid-1949, was 19.8 percent. In contrast, the cities which remained under control rose an average of 3.5 percent.

Then you call attention to the statement that some of these rents rose much more than that.

Now those are statements which you have a right to rely upon because they came to you from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

I should like to put in the record also the Bureau of Labor Statistics figures as they appear in the Economic Indicators, for that same period, which indicate that rents have increased. In 1949, the index stood at 120.8 percent.

The index on February 15 was 134. That would indicate, because we start out with 104 instead of 100, that the increase since 1949, throughout the United States, for rent, has been something less than 15 percent in that same period.

So I am constrained to believe that the statements which the Bureau of Labor Statistics have given you, in that statement upon which you rely, are rare occasions and do not reflect the conditions throughout the United States.

At the same time, food prices have risen 115 percent.

All items rose 84 percent.

While rent was increasing only about 30 percent, according to their new figures, that 30 percent adjusted to a formula which they used before 1929 would make it 23 percent. So I don't blame you for that. You have a perfect right to rely on the statement of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but in order to bring your own thinking on this up to date, and in order to point out the confusion which we experienced in trying to rely on Government figures, I think you should read the release put out by the Department of Labor known as the Economic Indicator, which will dispel any ideas which you might have as based on this statement.

The facts and figures shown in the statement which you read, although you got them from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, do not reflect the conditions as they exist throughout the United States.

Mr. SCHIFF. I will be glad to check into it. We would like to point out to you, once more, if I may, that these increases that you have mentioned, Mr. Wolcott, I think are very, very important from the point of view of both yourself and the association.

We don't like any controls, any more than the average person or the average Congressman does, but we know the standards of living of the people we deal with, and they comprise at least, shall I say, one-third of the Nation, and we know what they are up against.

Mr. WOLCOTT. You mean one-third of the Nation are getting social help?

Mr. SCHIFF. Today, one-third of the Nation, in terms of controls, can well use that kind of control, because of the level of income. Mr. WOLCOTT. You didn't indicate that one-third of the people of the Nation were getting social assistance.

Mr. SCHIFF. No; in terms of the level of their income. I wish we could do away with controls tomorrow, but unlike my friend from Texas, I can't go along with this business of just complete, free rein,

at the present time, when we have an enemy from without to fight that is a good deal more important, which I am afraid will affect the enemy from within, unless something is done to give us the kind of legislation which this bill envisages.

Mr. WOLCOTT. You and your organization are interested in bringing the cost of living down so that the social needs would be decreased to a minimum and thereby help to elevate the standard of living of the people you have to help.

I think that is a meritorious objective, and we go along with it. Now, that would apply also as much to food, power, and everything else that goes to make up the cost of living.

Mr. SCHIFF. That is right.

Mr. WOLCOTT. I think we agree that we must combat inflation. We have to stabilize the dollar and so on, and by doing so will help the lower third of the population.

Mr. SCHIFF. That is right. Because it is to that one-third, unless something is done, that we will find most of our difficulties as to ideologies come.

Mr. WOLCOTT. I think it is an obligation of this committee to do it, and I think this committee will try to find the answer to it. Mr. SCHIFF. I hope so.

Mr. WOLCOTT. However, I don't know whether it will.

Mr. MULTER. I think a better way to state it is not that your association is trying to bring prices down lower than where they are, but to keep them where they are and bring the income of people up, so that those lower-income groups will be in a better position to live decently. Isn't that a better way to put it?

Mr. SCHIFF. I appreciate your comments. would agree on that.

Mr. WOLCOTT. We agree on the objective.

I think all three of us

Mr. MULTER. That is right. I think you might also take the very same figures that Mr. Wolcott referred to and say that proves we do need price control-rent control and all the other controls at this time.

In other words, a man whose rent has only increased $5, or 25 percent, can't say because that increase is only 25 percent, while food has increased 40 percent and wearing apparel 60 percent, that he has a single dollar more with which to pay an increase in rent.

Mr. SCHIFF. As a matter of fact, I was privileged a year and a half ago to go on a trip that the Department of Defense arranged for what we call orientation purposes, and we went into Georgia, Florida, and some of the States through there.

We talked with the people through those areas, and they are up against a desperate situation in terms of the standards that you are talking about, Mr. Wolcott. I hope we can reach the objective soon enough.

The CHAIRMAN. We are glad to have your views, Mr. Schiff. You represent people who need assistance, and Congress will try to pass a bill that will give them at least some relief and help in stabilizing

Mr. NICHOLSON. I would like to ask Mr. Schiff a question. Who pays for the salaries of the workers that are in this organization?