of living and hence no successful over-all stabilization unless rents are stabilized. In the absence of controls, rents would rise on a broad front. The supply of rental housing is still inadequate. The 1950 census reported a vacancy rate of only 1.1 percent for nonseasonal nondilapidated dwelling units offered for rent. In the course of housing surveys in 100 cities during the last half of 1950, we contacted 1,251 leading realtors and managers of apartment houses and projects. They had 231,720 rental units under their management. Less than two-thirds of 1 percent of these units were vacant. With so little vacant housing available, the stage is set for a sharp rise in rents unless controls are continued and authority for recontrol is authorized. Rents have already begun to rise in some decontrolled cities. The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported that from 28 to 70 *. The aver * * In nine areas where rents have been uncontrolled * * percent of all rental units have experienced rent increases age rise in rents since mid-1949 for the nine decontrolled cities was 19.8 percent. In contrast, the cities which remained under control rose an average of 3.5 percent. These surveys were made several months ago. In the months ahead, purchasing power will continue to expand as hours of work are increased and additional workers are drawn into the labor force. This cannot help but increase the pressure on rents. As Mr. Wilson and Mr. Small have already pointed out, authority to stabilize rents is also essential to the successful prosecution of our industrial expansion and military procurement programs. In addition, as General Myers, Assistant Secretary for Air Stuart testified before the House, and Mr. Small has testified here, stabilization of rents is desperately needed to protect military personnel and their families in areas where training camps and bases are being reactivated or expanded. The CHAIRMAN. Would you mind stating for the record where those installations are? Mr. Woods. Yes, Senator, I would be happy to. I may want to refer to them a little later, but I will see that they are inserted in the record. (The information referred to follows:) The material requested concerning rent increases near military installations has already been submitted for the record by the Department of Defense, and will be found beginning on page 428. We are submitting for the record the attached photostats of a few of the many newspaper reports and letters which have come to our attention concerning exorbitant rents around military installations and in other defense areas. [From the Chicago (Ill.) Daily Tribune, Friday, December 29, 1950] HOMES SCARCE, RENTS SOAR IN CAMP POLK AREA-$20 AND $25 UNITS JUMP TO $90 A MONTH (By Clay Gowran, Chicago Tribune Press Service) CAMP POLK, La., December 28-Civilian property owners in small towns around this big Army camp are making rich profits from soldiers ready to pay almost any price for housing for their wives and children. Unkempt little houses and so-called apartments which went begging in Leesville and New Llano at $20 and $25 a month until Camp Polk was reopened last August are now earning up to $90 a month for their owners. And, if present tenants are driven out by the smells and the drabness, hundreds more are on the waiting lists. SEVENTY DOLLARS A MONTH FOR TWO ROOMS Sgt. Richard Hill, of St. Louis., Mo., and his wife and two children are among the lucky ones who have found quarters in Leesville. Sergeant Hill draws $289 a month from the Army in pay and allowances. He pays $70 a month for two rooms with sketchy cooking facilities, no private bath or toilet, and not even running water. Sergeant Hill's rooms are on the first floor of a shabby two-story frame building which houses six other apartments. On his floor are two other Army families which share with his family the only bathroom there. Upstairs is another bathroom, and four one-room apartments rented to Army families at $12 a week. $240 A MONTH INCOME The owner of the building is receiving $240 a month for the use of eight shoddy, semifurnished rooms which house seven military families. "Yeah, and that's not all," said Sergeant Bill. "The landlord says he is going to put running water in my flat-but then the rent will go up to $80 a month." On the south outskirts of Leesville, population 4,500, is a small clapboard shack which rented for $25 a month until Camp Polk came back into being. Then S1c Denton D. Cupit, 36, of Winnsboro, La., came looking for a temporary home for his wife, Dorothy, his son, Claude, 2, and his 4-month-old daughter, Dorane. The owner of the three-room shack moved out her $25 civilian tenant and rented the place to Sergeant Cupit at $75. BATHROOM WITH A VIEW For that, he gets a 12-by-12-foot living room, a small bedroom, a kitchen, and a bathroom. If you sit in the bathtub on a cold morning you can look out at a bleak landscape through chinks in a hastily boarded up, uninsulated doorway next to the tub. Next door is a six-room house, almost equally shabby, and owned by the same landlord, which rents at $150 a month. Multiply these examples by hundreds and you have the housing situation around this Army camp. Furthermore, rents can be expected to continue zooming as Camp Polk's military population continues to increase. SEVENTY-EIGHT RENTAL UNITS One of the few bright spots in the local housing picture is supplied by two Leesville brothers, Maurice Schwartz, 39, and Jack, 37. In 1948 they purchased from the Federal Government an extensive housing development built at the beginning of the last war to provide homes for Camp Polk's civilian personnel and Army families. They now have 78 four- and fiveroom rental units scattered over a rolling 47-acre tract covered with pine trees, each unit a spic and span little home. Schwartz rentals are $35 a month for an unfurnished four-room, two-level apartment; $37.50 for a five-room, two-level unfurnished apartment; $60 for a four-room furnished apartment of the same type; and $62.50 for a five-room furnished. "CAN'T SEE CLIPPING" GI'S "I keep the rents down because I have something called a conscience," said Jack Schwartz. "I just can't see clipping men who are trying to spend what may be their last few months in this country with their loved ones. It doesn't make sense to me." The Schwartz brothers do their best to see that the military families in their units are able to lead a decent life. Lawns are kept mowed by Schwartz employees. Special garbage collectors gather refuse several times a week. There's even a completely equipped playground and park for the youngsters in the area. [From the Detroit (Mich.) Free Press, March 7, 1951] MOUNT CLEMENS.-Excessive rent increases have been imposed on Selfridge Field Air Base personnel, a spokesman for the base charged. Capt. Arthur J. McConnell, Jr., public information officer, declared that some of the increases imposed on 800 military families were reckless. He said Col. James R. Gunn, base commander, had recommended a continued survey of the situation by unit commanders. The Selfridge Flyer, air-base publication, complained of the increases in a front-page editorial. Controls were lifted a week ago despite protests by Colonel Gunn. The following instances were cited: An airman who had been paying $55 a month for a $45-ceiling apartment has been asked to pay $80. A rental which had been $75 was raised to $125. [From the Topeka (Kans.) Daily Capital, Saturday, March 3, 1951] RENT PROFITEERS GIVING TOPEKA REPUTATION IT DOES NOT DESERVE An inherent human frailty is being demonstrated by disclosures in Topeka's rent-hike scandal. The avariciousness displayed by a few landlords, taking advantage of the urgent needs for homes to line their pockets with ill-gotten gains, amazes those who have the best interests of Topeka at heart. In some instances rents have been doubled. In others, unreasonable increases discourage and disgust the citizens trying to meet the city's obligation imposed by the reactivation of Forbes Air Base. Admitted that there is a housing shortage, and that wages and prices of materials have soared upward, this still does not excuse the greedy persons who seized the opportunity to prey upon the incoming families. For the most part, the military personnel has only moderate incomes and limited allowances for off-base housing. When the landlords demand exorbitant rentals they are robbing the women and children of men who are serving their country. They also are speeding the day when rigid rent controls will be imposed for the protection of soldiers' families. In some instances this will work an injustice upon morally responsible property owners who are holding the line on rentals. Wages and prices are not much higher now than before the Forbes Air Base was reopened. Owners of rental properties were getting along fairly well then, meeting competition by keeping their rentals within bounds. When the emergency was created by prospects of 2,500 new families coming to Topeka certain individuals became profiteers almost overnight. Now they are putting a dark stain upon their city's reputation for being a hospitable community. This kind of gouging does not promote a friendly feeling on the part of the victims. While relatively few of the landlords are taking unfair advantage of an unfortunate situation to prey upon Topeka's new residents, their covetousness reflects unfavorably upon the city as a whole. For a few paltry dollars these rent-hikers work uncalled for hardships upon newcomers who must have shelter for their loved ones. The city administration, chamber of commerce, and other agencies are desperately trying to find homes for the newcomers. They are grateful for the cooperation of the honest property owners. These patriotic citizens are the salt of the earth, with no desire to prey upon soldiers and their families. Many families with extra rooms in their homes are responding graciously to the chamber of commerce appeal for help in housing the families of servicemen. To meet the emergency, still more of this idle space in the larger homes should be made available at reasonable rentals. For its future welfare, Topeka cannot afford to gain the reputation of taking unfair advantage of military personnel. To avoid this, every citizen has a sacred obligation. Pressure must be brought to bear upon the profiteers until they see the error of their ways. [From the Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal, March 4, 1951] ARMY FAMILIES ARE BEING NIPPED AS THE HOUSING VISE TIGHTENS UP Rents in the neighborhood of Kentuckiana camps have increased as inadequate or nonexistent housing and hostile merchants, and the Army isn't exactly an ideal landlord, either. The men of the Armed Forces are in the middle again. Stories circulating through the country about gouging landlords, totally inade quate or nonexistent housing, and hostile merchants are being repeated, in varying degrees, in the areas of Camp Atterbury, Ind., and Camp Breckinridge, Fort Campbell, and Fort Knox, Ky. And guess who is one of the principal villains of the piece. Uncle Sam himself. A survey shows that, as the Army has expanded, military personnel has increased and installations have been reopened. 1. Rents have jumped in some places as high as 500 percent. The Army itself has increased some of its rents nearly 300 percent. QUARTERS INADEQUATE 2. Many military men are being forced to occupy inadequate (a much-too-mild term) quarters at high prices to keep from being separated from their families. The Army is an offender here, too. 3. Others are having to live at distances up to 40 miles from their stations to obtain comfortable places to live, many of these at high prices. 4. More have been forced to buy trailers and still pay pretty stiff space rentals. 5. The majority have had to resign themselves to separation from their families, some of them even after bringing their families to the camp areas and trying to exist in cramped, uncomfortable, or just plain squalid quarters. 6. Then there is the old, familiar "No children." 7. Numerous complaints have been made by military personnel of unfair treatment and extreme prices by local merchants. The picture in some ways is not as bad as it was in World War II. There have heen honest efforts by some towns in the military areas to clean themselves up. In some places merchants' associations have gone out of their way to treat service personnel fairly and courteously. REAL EFFORTS MADE Housing again is the principal sore spot. There has been some attempt in two areas-Fort Knox and Fort Campbell— to ease the situation-through civilian building, such as at Clarksville, Tenn., near Campbell, and through building of apartments by civilians on both posts. But this is just a drop in the bucket. Although there are now nowhere nearly as many soldiers in the KentuckyIndiana area as there were during World War II, the family situation is almost as bad. The reason, Army officials say, is that the veterans of the last war called back into the service brought along families that they didn't have when they were in before. Most of these are stationed more or less permanently as training-cadre members or with static units, and they feel they have a right to bring along their families. HOME-HUNGRY GI'S AT CAMP ATTERBURY ARE PAYING DEARLY The worst conditions for military men in Kentuckiana are in the Camp Atterbury area, where the Twenty-eighth Division, a federalized National Guard outfit from Pennsylvania, is stationed along with numerous smaller separate units. The reactivation of Sixth Army Corps there recently only served to aggravate the situation. The Army has quarters on the post for only about a dozen families of the thousands of men stationed there. The majority of the area is not under rent control. Two exceptions are Seymour and Columbus. The communities immediately adjacent to the post dropped controls some time ago, and many landlords are cashing in at the expense of the home-hungry GI's. From $20 up to $100 A survey was made last fall for Tighe E. Woods, Federal Housing Expediter, by having all military personnel living in the area fill out a questionnaire. 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However, they Tere The Dackbone of our country at home during the inst war. £nd had it not beat for then the county wonit never have been the arsenal of democracy of VLC1. We nove so ofter boasted. Despite the valuable service rendered by these people at home during the war, sometimes at the cost of their health, the inwmakers have entirely failed to proves them against the Srylocks who are taking advantage of their helpiess Plain It is my understanding that employees of the du Pont Co. are being issued certificates enabling them to purchase homes in this area with a nominal down payment suci as is required of veterans Has any provisions been made te house employees of other Government establishments who may be ousted fret |