Chanute Field was removed from the unqualified category of critical in the Housing Report on Major USAF Bases.

Fort Benning, Ga., is another area which does not have rent control although it is a critical area under the Defense Housing Act. Located at Fort Benning is one of the Army's major bases with an admitted housing shortage. But the Army has been successful in resisting the efforts of the Rent Director in Washington to impose Federal rent control.

Why? Because the Army in Fort Benning is solving the problem of housing and rents through local cooperation. The Army appreciates that the imposition of Federal rent control may undo the progress it has made, through the substitution of Washington bureaucracy for the traditionally American way of solving local problems locally.

Fort Jackson, S. C., is another example of how the rent and housing problem is being met and solved locally. As a matter of fact, Fort Jackson was one of the areas cited by the Senate Military Preparedness Subcommittee as an outstanding example of local solution to the housing problem brought on by the impact of increased military activity upon a community.

Mr. BROWN. Fort Benning, Ga., is one of the largest posts in the United States; is it not?

Mr. FITZGERALD. I think so.

Under the Defense Housing Act many areas have been designated as critical defense-housing areas and programing of housing for construction under FHA title IX and relaxed credit controls. However, the units programed have represented generally from one-third to onefourth of the actual needs of the military service concerned. The big problem has been how to make up the deficit. The services tell us that the principal source of these additional units must be conversions, wherein a property owner adds facilities to his property so as to accommodate a serviceman's family.

Yet the greatest deterrent to such conversions is Federal rent control-not only because Washington is going to tell the property owner what he and tenant may agree on as rent but also because Washington in effect warns the property owner that once the unit is rented occupancy is frozen and he will no longer have control over his own property, even after rental contracts have expired. Is it any wonder, then, that Federal rent control defeats its purposes and gradually, but inevitably, denies to those, who for occupational or economic reasons must rent, the opportunity of obtaining a suitable rental unit.

No one will dispute that we are living in a rapidly changing economy. Within 3 weeks after former Defense Mobilizer Wilson's February appeal to the Nation in a radio and television broadcast message on the subject "The Battle for Production," some of the very things Mr. Wilson advocated and predicted were in complete reversal. Apparently the great productive machine of American industry had filled the pipelines to bulging. Reports were that requirements of the military would be considerably less than at first anticipated. Stockpiles of critical materials were needed in areas described as "distressed labor areas." More than 600 religious, community, and municipal-building projects were given the green light by NPA. Restrictions on construction of homes, office buildings, factories, highways, and other

projects were eased by NPA. A batch of orders that were intended to be issued to control home construction was revoked.

This rapid change in events may well indicate that we are on the road to accomplishing our production schedules for the defense-mobilization program, with more critical materials available for housing construction and consumer goods than we had been led to believe would be available. Even as recent as last week NPA was making more materials available for nondefense uses. We urge that, rather than resorting to rent control these critical materials be used right now to alleviate what housing shortages may remain in our defense and military critical areas.

We respectfully point out that this production cannot be accomplished in an atmosphere of Government control and direction. We believe now, more than ever before, that the need for Federal rent control is over, even in the critical defense-housing areas as provided for in Public Law 96. Proof that local communities can handle their own problems better is evident in the examples we have cited-. Chanute Air Force Base, Ill.; Fort Benning, Ga.; Fort Jackson, S. C. These are but a few of many which are meeting the problem head-on and with local cooperative efforts are eradicating its causes through conversions, new construction, and working together to make rental homes available.

Although we are of the firm conviction that inequities and maladministration are inherent in any rent-control law, we nevertheless feel that the committee should be apprised of at least a few facts on the Rent Director's stewardship of the Federal rent office.

For example, there is the question of the 20 percent automatic increase above June 30, 1947, rent levels which Congress granted last year. Despite the fact that this token adjustment was to be automatic upon application, the Rent Director proceeded to throw obstacles into its path. We are attaching to this statement the case history (exhibit E) of a property owner who would have been better off had the Congress never authorized a 20 percent increase. By the time the area rent director in Newark was through with him he was receiving less rent than before the Congress granted this intended relief. We are of the firm opinion that the shabby treatment of this property owner was arbitrary in the extreme and indicates how the rent act is shaped and twisted to suit the will of the rent director.

Time precludes our going into a detailed discussion of this case history, but it involves a unit on which for 10 years, with the agreement of owner and tenant, the rent was based on the owner not furnishing painting and decorating services. This was embodied in the 1942 registration of the dwelling certified by the area rent director. However, in 1951 at the apparent instigation of the original tenant, the area rent director retroactively nullified the original registration, announced that painting and decorating services should have been, included in the rent, notwithstanding the 1942 registration certificate and decreed that the rent should be reduced rather than raised. This is only one of a number of such cases that could be cited.

It is not difficult to understand how the area rent directors are inspired to administer the law in such a manner. Attached to this statement (exhibit F) is a summary of a meeting of area rent directors in Detroit, Mich., in February 1952, presided over by Rent Director Woods. This summary was prepared by the Georgia rent director

to guide his staff in administering the law. It is an understatement to say that the revelations in this summary of the Detroit meeting are shocking. Under Compliance on page 2, the staff is cautioned thusly:

Treble damages should be assessed against large or professional landlords. Small landlords (expecially women) who do not follow an order may be assessed one and a half or double damages (the area rent director should use discretion on a case basis).

We must reluctantly conclude that one so unfortunate as to be a large property owner is not entitled to whatever fair treatment might flow from the mere exercise of the area rent director's discretion.

Again, under Compliance, paragraph 8 on page 2 (exhibit F) we have this rather astounding statement:

If Litigation will not accept a case because the landlord is entitled to the 20 percent and says the court will allow the 20 percent anyway, or thinks the case too weak on the self-help angle, it should be sent to them regardless.

I am sure the rent director, upon proper notice and belated deliberation, will come up with some excuse, lame as it may be. But there it is, in one short paragraph-the arrogance, the disdain for fair and equitable enforcement of the law, that runs through the entire administration of rent control. Again we must emphasize that it is not so much Mr. Woods' fault as it is the inherent inequality of treatment in the whole system of rent control that has made almost a mockery of rental property ownership in this country.

We have just touched upon some of the statements in exhibit F. We hope that some time soon you will ponder over the contents of this exhibit. If you do, we have little doubt that your decision will be to let this type of control expire once and for all time on June 30 of this year.

It might also be well to point out to the committee how completely rent control is under the whip hand of the Washington rent office. The committee should know that the so-called rent advisory boards, lauded so much by the rent director in his testimony of May 5, instead of being advisory, in many instances have become subservient to the rent controllers. Shamefully little attention is directed to the wishes of the local community in the matter of certification for rent control, contrary to the general concept that the local communities will have an opportunity to be heard. These and a host of other factors have brought Federal rent control to the threshhold of permanence as a political and social weapon.

May we give you but one example of Washington's domination over a community. Rent Director Woods has claimed that the local rent advisory board not only had no knowledge of the certification as crittical and subsequent imposition of rent control upon the area until they read it in the newspapers, but vigorously opposed such certification.

It was not until Congressman William Ayres of Akron, Ohio, raised his voice in protest and threatened a congressional investigation that the true story of the certification of the Lorain County area for full Federal rent control came to light.

However, it took 31⁄2 months from the date of certification, October 30, 1951, until February 15, 1952, for the Federal officials to admit they had made a gross mistake in certifying Lorain as a critical area. Certification was withdrawn as recorded on page 1510 of the Federal