PROMOTING MAXIMUM UTILIZATION OF EXISTING

HOUSES.

After demonstrating that war contracts were being delayed because of inadequate housing, the next essential step was to see that every existing structure within that community or its accessible suburbs should house as many persons as it could be made to house healthfully and with decency.

This process of saturation was left in charge of the Homes Registration and Information Division of the bureau. This division, through the cooperation of the local postmen or police, generally made a brief, quick survey of all vacant houses, flats, or buildings under the following classifications: street address, condition and type of building, nationality and race of district, sales price or rental.

VALUE OF THE VACANCY CANVASS.

This first vacancy canvass was used as a basis for determining the next step in the Federal program. For if it showed that there were no available houses suitable for skilled married workers in the city proper, but that there was abundant suitable housing in the suburbs, the next step was to study the means of rendering that suburban housing available for skilled workers through improved transportation. If this survey showed an abundance of housing for unskilled labor and no housing suitable for skilled, either in the city or its suburbs, then a program of construction of houses of a type suitable for skilled workers was indicated. If the survey showed that practically all vacant houses were held for sale, then it was clear that measures should be taken to induce the owners, for patriotic reasons, to rent their homes to war workers, and in case they failed to respond to this appeal it would be necessary to consider the wisdom of commandeering the properties. This canvass might also reveal well-located vacant houses or buildings unsuitable for the use of families but of a type which could be converted for use as dormitories for single labor. In that case the need and advisability of converting these buildings for such use would have to be more closely considered.

The transportation, commandeering, and construction program of the bureau, therefore, hinged largely upon the findings of this preliminary vacancy canvass.

THE HOMES REGISTRATION SERVICE COMMITTEE.

The preliminary vacancy canvass above described was supplemented in more than 100 cities by a more detailed and more accurate survey arranged for in cooperation with the national, State, and local councils of defense. A local committee known as the homes registration service committee was formed

with the help of the council of defense, but with representatives of the chamber of commerce, of the manufacturers engaged in war industries, of bankers, real estate boards, local civic organizations or housing committees, and, in the larger cities, with representatives of the Y. M. C. A., the Y. W. C. A., the War Camp Community Service, and similar organizations which might have an interest in war workers or knowledge of local housing conditions or which might have maintained room registries for the use of their own clientele.

By this local representative committee some local agency or group of agencies was found to make a thorough house to house canvass of the entire city. This canvass was generally made by the women's committee of the Council of National Defense, but sometimes by school teachers, by real estate men, by the police, by soldiers, by the Red Cross, or by volunteers secured through advertising or enrolling for service at the mass meetings held to initiate such a

canvass.

LISTING AND CLASSIFYING THE VACANCIES.

Investigation cards were supplied by the Housing Bureau, and the local citizens who volunteered their services to make this canvass were carefully instructed by field agents of the Homes Registration and Information Division. The canvass covered from one day to two weeks, according to circumstances. When completed and tabulated it provided the Housing Bureau with a practically correct statement of every available house and flat and, if necessary, every room in the city, which the householders could be induced to rent. As all the cards indicated the type, size, equipment, quality, and price of each of the available accommodations, it was possible to calculate from this canvass exactly how much the Housing Bureau could count upon local resources for meeting its problem.

This problem was not merely to secure housing, but to secure housing of a sort suitable for a particular class or classes of labor, within reasonable access of the plant in which they were employed and at a price which they could afford to pay out of the wages they received, and with further limitations, also, as to the district in which they could live, or the type of house which they would accept, due to racial or other peculiarities.

NEED OF A PLACEMENT AGENCY.

Owing to the failure in American communities to provide for central listing agencies, the incoming homesecker, prior to the war, was forced to have recourse to the scattered and imperfect lists maintained by the few real estate agents whose offices

he visited. Though there might be vacant houses in the community which would amply meet his needs. and those of his family, the chances were slight that such houses would come to his attention, even though he devoted many days to the search, and he often. had to put up with a house which was unsatisfactory. The war emergency, however, made it desirable not only to determine the number of vacancies in the community, but also to make sure that each incoming skilled worker should be helped to find the vacant house which would most nearly suit his needs and to find it with the minimum expenditure of time and effort.

ADMINISTRATION OF HOMES REGISTRATION SERVICE.

After the local committee had completed its vacancy canvass it was further assisted in forming a local placement office in which all vacancies of the city and its accessible suburbs should be listed. The chairman of the local committee was officially appointed local representative of the Bureau of Industrial Housing and Transportation of the United States Department of Labor, and was charged with "listing, conserving, and where necessary improving existing homes." To increase industrial efficiency and contentment and to reduce the labor turnover on war contracts he was to induce owners of vacant property to make their property sanitary and homelike and to list it with the Homes Registration Service.

An office was established in some central location accessible to the incoming war worker and his family. Desk room was generally granted free by the United States Employment Service, the city hall, the council of defense, the chamber of commerce, or some other civic agency. The local committee raised money within the community to pay for its clerical staff, standard supplies being provided from the Washington office, including the form cards used for investigation and placements, posters, and instructions. Local managers were trained by the field agents of the Homes Registration Service, and, by means of an ingenious filing system, were generally able in a few minutes' time to tell the applicant of every room or house in the city which answered his specifications as to size, quality, location, and price. The advice to applicants was free.

In the larger cities, where there were already one or more existing registries maintained by the Y. W. C. A., the Y. M. C. A., the War Camp Community Service, the traveler's aid, the board of trade, the real estate exchange, or other organizations, these were induced for patriotic reasons to merge in or clear through the central office. Thus all vacancies and all placements were recorded in one place as soon as made, so that

applicants would not be sent to rooms already rented by another agency. In this way much time was saved the incoming workman and his family, and the service was rendered vastly more efficient than it could otherwise have been. To keep the lists up to date rooms were solicited from time to time through the daily press, through appeals in the churches, moving-picture theaters, and elsewhere, and especially through posters.

In some cities a second or even a third vacancy canvass was made after the lapse of a few months to make sure that absolutely every vacancy in the city had come to the attention of the registry and that no quarters already rented were listed as

vacant.

STATISTICS OF HOMES REGISTRATION SERVICE.

Altogether vacancy canvasses were made in approximately 150 communities. Registries were established and placements made in 88 communities and the total number of recorded applicants for rooms. flats, and houses was 127,295. This represents, however, only the applicants who were provided with addresses, for a considerable fraction of the registries were unable to give any addresses of houses to applicants, due to the fact that the community contained no vacant houses of suitable type, but only dilapidated dwellings, expensive mansions, or rooms for single occupants. The total number of reported placements up to June 28, 1919, was 71,481. The actual number of placements traceable to the Homes Registration Service would, however, run well over one hundred thousand, due to the fact that its posters and advertising stimulated the citizens to take roomers of their own selection direct and not through the medium of the registry. Moveover, in three cities, Chicago, Asbury Park, and Long Branch, in which printed lists of all available vacancies were issued by the Homes Registration Committees, thousands of placements were made from these printed lists instead of through the registries.

SAVINGS EFFECTED BY HOMES REGISTRATION SERVICE.

By the above means it was discovered that many cities which requested the construction of dormitories could have housing provided for their single labor in private families through the Homes Registration Service after a careful canvass and a general solicitation for rooms had been conducted. It was possible, also, to reduce the number of houses to be constructed in several communities, because houses were found by the Homes Registration Service and made available through improved transportation service.

Millions of dollars in construction costs were unquestionably saved to the Government by means of the Homes Registration Service. As registries main

tained by the Federal Government would have cost the Government approximately $5,000 per annum each, on an average, hundreds of thousands of dollars additional were saved by persuading the communities, for patriotic reasons, to provide locally for the financing and operation of their registries.

IMPROVEMENT OF OLD PROPERTIES.

The local homes registration service increased the available supply of suitable housing also by inducing the local citizens to make boarding houses of large idle properties which were unsuitable for the use of industrial families but quite suitable for the use of unmarried male or female workers. In some of the cities many of the properties which were idle because of dilapidation or obsolescence were brought into use by inducing the owner to put them in good repair and modern condition and by assisting him in securing loans for this purpose. (See Appendix V, p. 97.)

All of the registries were instructed to place on the deferred list any houses which were unsuitable for housing labor because of poor sanitation, bad repair, defective equipment, poor maintenance, etc., and they were instructed to get in touch with the owners of such properties and induce them to put their properties in condition so that they would be suitable for homes for workmen, while at the same time they might be income-bearing for the property owner. is probable that thousands of houses were put into condition as a result of this propaganda, thus materially increasing the efficiency and contentedness of the labor in the cities where this was done.

CONTROL OF RENT PROFITEERING.

It

One serious cause of discontent in the congested industrial cities was the practice of rent profiteering. In order to get and hold labor on war contracts it became necessary for the Housing Bureau to devise some means of preventing this practice. In the more congested communities, where there were few if any vacancies in the houses of a certain class, many landlords took advantage of the situation to charge exorbitant rentals, and rentals generally increased considerably. The Department of Labor, through the War Labor Policies Board, sent a special agent to New London, where such complaints were peculiarly serious, and established a committee of 24 persons, representing the employees, the manufacturers engaged in war industries, and the general public. This committee was charged with examining into alleged cases of rent profiteering, if necessary calling both the landlord and the tenant before it, the first aim being to find out if the landlord was charging an excessive rental for his property. If the rental was found to be excessive the committee would show the owner that

his high rental interfered with the fulfillment of war contracts by discouraging labor or making it difficult for workingmen to find proper housing at prices which they could pay. He was then urged, on patriotic grounds, to reduce his rates to a figure which the committee considered would represent a reasonable rental on such property.

The New London plan was adopted by the Homes Registration Division to meet similar conditions throughout the country. In communities from which only a single complaint was received that complaint was generally referred by letter to the chairman of the local council of defense, with the request that he establish a committee of three or more persons which would represent the propertied class and the tenant class equally, but with a chairman mutually acceptable. Field agents of the Homes Registration Division were generally sent to the communities from which more than one complaint was received and a committee was established through the local council of defense, either independently or as a subcommittee of the local registration service, if there was one. Such committees consisted of equal representation of the propertied interests (in general real estate agents and builders) and of the tenants (generally represented by organized labor) with a chairman mutually acceptable. Frequently such committees consisted of only three persons and were seldom as large as the New London committee, except in cities where there was a committee for each ward or district. In this latter case the district committees occasionally met as a committee of the whole to compare notes, establish policies, and in a few cases to sit as a sort of court of appeals.

Though the practice of rent profiteering was national in its consequences, the Housing Bureau acted upon the theory that it could be handled best by the communities in which it occurred rather than by the Federal Government. The Federal Government, therefore, limited itself, with very few exceptions, to promoting the establishment of a committee on rent profiteering of a representative type and relied upon the good judgment of the local citizens, who were thoroughly familiar with the intricacies of the situation in their own community and who represented a balance of opposing local interests, to determine what might constitute rent profiteering and what might constitute a reasonable increase in rent. The committees so established unquestionably did an immense amount of good. They took their task very seriously, made an earnest attempt to settle the grievances out of court, and in the process did much to correct the prevalent misunderstandings. In many cases brought to their attention the landlord was obviously justified in his rental increase. It was very important that the

tenant under such circumstances should be made, to see the reasonableness of the landlord's position so that his discontent should not be increased or be allowed to spread to others. On the other hand, there were many cases in which the landlord was charging a rent so high as to cause real hardship and to yield a preposterously high income on his investment. In such cases, almost without exception, the landlord, when shown that this practice interfered with the winning of the war, voluntarily reduced his rents. Where he did not conform to the decision of the voluntary committee, the committee had recourse to publicity, merely stating the facts of the case in the local press and leaving it to the judgment of the citizens as to whether this man was a profiteer or not. As many of the profiteers feared such publicity they were brought to terms by this method.

There was, however, a residue of cases which could not be met by this device. The landlord could have been brought to terms had the Bureau of Industrial Housing had power to commandeer occupied property in cases where excessive rentals were charged. That power was sought from Congress in a bill (H. R. 12835) prepared by the Bureau of Industrial Housing and submitted on August 29, 1918, by Representative Clark, of Florida, and referred to the committee on Public Buildings and Grounds. This bill was not passed.

The most serious cases of rent profiteering were those in which the tenants, who were valued workers in war industries, were evicted because they were unwilling or unable to pay a greatly increased rental or because the house was sold over their heads. Many urgent letters were received by the Housing Corporation from war industries, specifying that a certain employee whose services were indispensable would be evicted from his house on a certain day and that there was no other home in the city which would be available for him. In such cases, since it was impossible for the Housing Corporation to commandeer occupied property, there was little that could be done. In a few cases, where some member of the workman's family was dependent upon a soldier or sailor, it was possible to stay the eviction under the act approved March 8, 1918, to "Extend protection to the civil rights of members of the military and naval establishments of the United States." In cases where the workman was employed on individual contracts in the manufacturing of torpedo-boat destroyers or parts thereof, it was possible to call upon the Navy to commandeer under the urgent deficiencies act (40 Stat. 345). Some eviction cases were stayed by persuasion, others by Federal investigation; in two or three States the governors or the mayors of cities urged or commanded a stay of evictions of workers engaged on war contracts for a specified period, generally until the

cessation of hostilities. By utilizing the above crude devices in cases of threatened eviction it was possible to prevent the evictions in a majority of the more serious cases. (See Appendix V, p. 104.)

STATISTICS OF COMMITTEES ON RENT PROFITEERING.

Forty-eight committees on rent profiteering, established by or reporting to the Housing Bureau, reported a total of 8,029 cases. Of the decisions reported 1,102 upheld the landlord, 3,456 upheld the tenant, and 1,535 required concessions from both landlord and tenant. In the remaining cases reported formal decisions were not necessary or the cases were withdrawn, as frequently happened when the tenant discovered that not all instances of rent raising were cases of rent profiteering. The number of evictions prevented by these committees through persuasion is recorded as 752. These figures are far from being complete, as vast numbers of cases were not reported, although handled by these committees. Much of the best work

of the committees also was accomplished by their members individually or by their investigators or representatives, by discussion with the landlord or tenant, or both, in their homes or places of business, and these cases were settled without recourse to the committees.

UTILIZING EXISTING HOUSING IN WASHINGTON, D. C.

The problem with reference to homes registration and rent profiteering in Washington was different from that in other American cities and had to be met by different means. Rent profiteering was covered by a special statute, known as the "Saulsbury resolution," and hence the establishment of voluntary committees to handle cases of rent profiteering out of court was rendered impracticable. Tenants whose rights under the Saulsbury resolution were threatened or violated were protected in court by the Housing and Health Division of the War Department.

This division of the War Department also encouraged the establishment of boarding houses for war workers by establishing a fund of $25,000 to make furniture loans on chattel deeds of trust to intending matrons The District of Columbia Council of Defense also maintained a room registration office at 1321 New York Avenue, which was supported out of the President's fund for national security and defense. Mr. Hege, the manager of that office, was the secretary of the District Council of Defense and in the latter capacity advised the citizens with reference to their rights. under the Saulsbury resolution.

By July, 1918, it became apparent that further funds should be made available for loans to matrons, that room-registration activities should be expanded,

that the vacant houses in Washington should be commandeered, in order that all available residential space should be utilized. The committee known as the Washington Committee on the Equipment of Houses was established by the Housing Corporation, of which the manager of the Homes Registration and Information Division was chairman and Capt. Peyser and Mr. Hege the other members. The sum of $25,000 was allotted to this committee for making loans to matrons. This committee, however, soon realized the necessity of urging a broader policy upon the Housing Corporation and recommended the commandeering of several vacant properties which could not otherwise be rendered available for the housing of war workers. As the result of this recommendation a Committee on Requisitioned Houses was established, consisting of the manager of the Homes Registration and Information Division, the manager of the Real Estate and Commandeering Division, and the manager of the Operating Division. This committee, in cooperation with the Committee on the Equipment of Houses, recommended the coordination of the housing activities in Washington. Quarters were secured at 1414 H Street Northwest and through the cooperation of District Commissioner Brownlow and of the War Department a central office, known as the Washington Division of the Homes Registration Service, was established with Mr. Hege as the manager. The Housing and Health Division of the War Department was moved from 719 Fifteenth Street into the same quarters with the Washington Division. The Washington Committee on the Equipment of Houses was disbanded, its functions being taken over by Mr. Hege. The operation of commandeered properties was subsequently lodged in this same office, thus materially increasing the effectiveness of local efforts to enlarge the quantity and improve the quality of accommodations for war workers in Washington, and increasing the services to all applicants for assistance. (See Appendices XVI and XVII.)

COMMANDEERING OF VACANT PROPERTIES.

In virtually all the cities in which the war industries were located there were some vacant houses in spite of the prevalent congestion of population. If such houses were found suitable for the use of wage earners they were at once listed and if available for rent at prices within the reach of war workers were rented through the local office of the Homes Registration Service. After this had been done there generally remained some vacancies which belonged to one or another of the following classes:

1. New houses built for sale.

2. Dilapidated properties unfit for habitation unless extensive repairs should be made,

3. Large residences of the well to do, abandoned as a rule because of the encroachments of commercial or industrial districts upon former residential quarters of the city, no longer desired by members of the wealthy class, and not adapted in their present form for use by the industrial population.

The efforts of the local homes registration committees to bring these houses into use have already been described. Their efforts, though successful in some quarters, failed in others, and many of these properties continued to be idle. There were no means at hand to bring them into use unless the Bureau of Industrial Housing should exercise the power to requisition the use of the dwellings conferred under the act "Housing for war needs." Urgent requests to commandeer such properties were submitted by the War and Navy Departments and by local communities. After investigation 35 properties were so requisitioned at Bethlehem; 11 at Philadelphia; 20 at Shelton (Conn.); 29 at Erie, and 141 at Washington, D. C. Except for those properties at Washington, requisitioned properties which had been commandeered in the fall of 1918 had not largely been put to use at the time of the signing of the armistice, and steps were taken immediately after the armistice to return these properties to their owners. In Washington, however, the condition was more acute and much less changed by the armistice than in these other cities, making it desirable to hold the properties for a longer period. Had the armistice not interrupted the program of the Committee on Requisitioned Houses accommodations would have been provided by this means in the 141 properties already requisitioned for at least 1,600 war workers. Arrangements had also been made for taking over the Hotel Gordon in February, 1919, which would have provided accommodations for 600 more persons.

The policy of the Committee on Requisitioned Houses was to take all vacant properties in the hands of private citizens, trustees, or corporations unless investigation should prove these properties to be so dilapidated that the cost of making repairs could not be justified by the use to which they would be put. A few other houses were excluded by rule of the committee which were either newly constructed, newly or extensively renovated, or which contained equipment so expensive that the damages which would have been occasioned by their use as boarding houses for war workers would have been excessive. It was the policy of the committee in general to release houses to the owners or lessees provided they would sign an agreement satisfactory to the committee to open up the house and have every bedroom occupied by war workers or members of their families. By means of such release agreements 64 houses were released prior to the armistice without the payment of damages by the