Miss McKAIGH. I did. Representative BLANTON. And they fixed it. Now, if they have. a bootlegging zone there in the Plaza at this time Miss McKAIGH. I did not say they had one in the Plaza. Miss McKAIGH. I said they had one in the neighborhood of K and L and M Streets, between Twenty-second and Twenty-fourth and Twenty-sixth Streets Representative BLANTON. If they have bootlegging down there, do you not feel under the same obligation to notify your Department of Justice? Miss McKAIGH. I would if I knew exactly where it was; if I could locate it. Representative BLANTON. That is all. Miss McKAIGH. I might notify some other peolpe who would be glad to know. TESTIMONY OF REV. C. A. DE VAUGHN (COLORED) The CHAIRMAN. Will you be sworn? Mr. DE VAUGHN. I take the same position relative to being sworn that Doctor Waldron did. The CHAIRMAN. Very well. The witness was thereupon duly affirmed by the chairman.) The CHAIRMAN. You may proceed with such statement as you desire to make. Mr. DEVAUGHN. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I shall be brief in making some statements in support of Doctor Waldron and some statements that I have for myself along the alley property. I represent 3,572 residents of alley property renters of the District of Columbia and I call your attention to the record. Navy Place consists of 61 houses, all occupied by colored people, and the rents in the last six months have been raised $7, now aggregating $15.50. Two-thirds of those houses have neither back yards nor back sheds or fences. If they launder in the day they are compelled to take their laundry down at night if it rains or they would have none the next morning. Francis Street southeast has within it 38 houses of the same class. No improvements have been made on either one of these properties in the last five years. We conduct a gospel truck and have been for seven years in 168 alleys and courts of the District of Columbia, and we know wherein we speak. We meet these people and talk with them each day. In our home district, of which Doctor Waldron spoke and I must agree with my good friend of the committee over there-talk about worse conditions and high rents; you ought to go into Snows Row. You ought to go into Johnsons Court or O'Briens Court. Senator COPELAND. I have been in all of them. Mr. DE VAUGHN. Enormous rents asked for that property by real estate men, enormous, and they have been served notices on recently. If the house don't bother you, don't you bother them. Pay the rent or get out. Then I come back to Phillips Court, right in one of the finest sections of West Washington, bounded by M and N Streets, where houses rent all the way from $10 to $18.50, back windows out, doors 27363-25-PT 2- -6 half off the hinges, and you can sit in the kitchen and look outdoors anywhere. The roofs leak. They told them to either pay the rent when they increased it or get out. 4 I want to say to you, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, we could fill this room if the renters, the tenants, have the nerve to come, but they are being told by some of the landlords and the agents, "You go down to the Rent Commission if you dare. You had better have the rent there the day it is due." In this weather now two-thirds of the whole court people are not working. It is impossible for him to have his rent of $15 which is due day after to-morrow. If he comes down here and testifies he gets notice to quit. The marshal will be there about Saturday and serve notice on him, and that means $2.10 more added to his $14.50. That is the condition, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, of the poor working class, the common people of the District of Columbia, in 108 alleys and courts. To back that up, I do not say and I will not attempt to say that all the landlords and all the real estate men are unfair. I am handling some property now for a gentleman by the name of Mr. Wallace Brown. It was sold to Mr. Carroll Dean September 15, 1923. He paid $7,300 for it. He spent $1,716 on it, on which I contracted to do the work. He got me to go through the building and to get all the tenants in those apartments to sign a lease to pay 20 per cent more in the rent with the understanding that he was going to put the building in absolute sanitary condition. The agent was Mr. Fowler-Edward B. Fowler. When he got half way through the repairs which he agreed to and everybody had signed, Mr. Diggs, owner of the property, sat at his desk at 1003 I Street and said to say to the tenants, "I am not going to make any more improvements at all--tell them I can not until I get back half of my money." I got busy then and thought I would try to change hands for the property. Mr. O'Brien came here from New Hampshire and bought 2618 K and I encouraged him to buy 2620, where I live. We have two apartments in there, mine being one of them, and the other one belonging to a Mrs. Smith. We two, Mrs. Smith and myself, agreed to pay $27.50 for a five-room apartment and bath. We are perfectly satisfied with it. There are two apartments renting for $20, by Mr. Roy Reynolds and Mr. George Hutchinson; then there is Mr. William Parker, $22.50, and Mrs. Jackson, $10. All were perfectly satisfied. When Mr. O'Brien purchased it, the broker through whose office this property was sold advised that he could get for my apartment $45 easy, and for Smith's apartment $50. Mr. O'Brien took me into confidence and asked what I thought about it. He said that the two houses were bringing him $300 a month. They were netting him 10 per cent on his money and he was perfectly satisfied with that if he could get his rent promptly. There is one square man with the tenants, but you don't find more than two out of every hundred. They tell us that property has increased in value. Here is another thing, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, that is confronting us as colored people. I sit here testifying before you honorable gentlemen with not the slightest prejudice, because the Bible teaches me that no prejudiced man shall even see the kingdom of heaven, much less enter it. Therefore I want to go to heaven and I am done with these devils. [Laughter.] Here is another condition we are confronting. These are facts. If we go down on Virginia Avenue, bounded by Nineteenth Street, and buy property or try to buy property that the real estate men have to sell and they know we are colored, what do we meet? "What do you want for that house?' "We want $4,400 for it." It is in a residential and business section. Another man will come along and want it for an investment, a white man. "What do you want for that piece of property?" "I will take $3,000 for it." If we have got the money to buy a piece of cheap property we can not buy it because they will ask a couple more thousand for it than the Jew over there. The Jew can get it for $3,000 and we will have to pay $4,000 to $5,000. These conditions confront us all around now on Virginia Avenue. Another condition I want to call your attention to, Mr. Chairman and honorable gentlemen, that if you don't bring about some move by which the poor laboring class of people--not only the colored man, but every man who has to toil for his daily bread, and who has to live in cheap quarters-if there is not some rule laid down by which these sharks can be governed, you will have one of the worst conditions in the city of Washington in the next five years you have ever known of. We are fanning it; we are fanning the breeze of a strike, and we will be in a position that we will not be able to manage or control the situation. Take the houses to-day up where the Representatives referred to awhile ago, up northwest. Well might he ask the question. Certainly we have well-to-do folks that have big homes, and pretty near every one of them up on Florida Avenue and U Street and New Hampshire Avenue are chockablock-why? Because the next better class of people can't get anywhere to go. They are tearing down handsome houses where colored people have been on New Hampshire Avenue and L Street, and putting up four and five story garages. Where are the school-teachers? Where are the dressmakers and hair dressers going? They have to go up on U Street amidst that better class of our people who own property, and open up establishments whereby they can make a living. They get these big houses and enjoy them by themselves. They are crowded out and they have to do that in order to take care of the class of people who want to do with that class. Take Navy Place, for instance; 25 houses in there in Navy Place averaging from 8 to 14 people to a four room house. If Congress or any real estate man will come down to my office, 2620 K Street NW. to-morrow, and tell me where there are 150 houses that I can rent for $30 a month, I will fill them all inside of 20 days, every one of them, and fill them with decent, respectable people that will pay the rent. But what do they tell you? Those houses over in the colored section are for sale. There is not a real estate man within the sound of my voice that doesn't know that his office is being flooded every day with a good class of our folks that are hunting for houses to rent. He has them for sale, but not to rent. When he finds he can not find a fellow he can hoodwink and get a payment of $250 from him and he finds he is getting in debt, then he goes back and puts a little notice in the paper, "Houses of six rooms and bath, steam heat, gas and electric light, rent for $40." I just came from down there yesterday and he said he didn't want to rent it, but it was for sale. That is the condition all over town. I have 13 families in my neighborhood now that I can't even find three rooms for, much less a house, but there are plenty of Virginia Avenue residences and residences all over in the Georgetown colored section for sale. The man who drives the garbage wagon and the coal wagon, the man who tends to you gentlemen's furnaces can't afford to buy a house. He simply can't afford to do it. I could say more, but I don't want to trespass upon your valuable time. Senator COPELAND. I have no questions to ask, but I think he is making a very good witness. I hope some members of the committee have some questions. Representative HAMMER. You gave a number of instances and called the names, but you have not the time now, under our arrangement for division of time, to go into the matter further. I suggest that you come back later. I wish you would come back and give us some concrete examples of these worst houses. It was disclosed in our hearings before a House subcommittee a year ago that there was great discrimination against the colored people and that they were imposed upon by heartless landlords in exorbitant rents and poor accommodations, especially insanitary. If you can give us a few concrete examples in addition to those you have given us to-night, I, for one, would be glad to have you do so. You spoke about houses that sold for $4,400 to colored people and the same houses being offered to white people for $3,000. I would be glad to have the names of the real-estate people involved in cases of that kind. Mr. DE VAUGHN. I will be very glad to furnish the information. I thank you. TESTIMONY OF ROBERT E. NORFLEET (The witness was duly sworn by the chairman.) Mr. NORFLEET. I just want to tell why I was put out of my place. I lived for the last six years in 1107 Eleventh Street NW. The CHAIRMAN. Is that an apartment house? Mr. NORFLEET. An apartment house rented by George W. Linkins, 1719 K Street NW. When we moved in they charged us $50. The CHAIRMAN. What size was the apartment? Mr. NORFLEET. One room, bath, and a place to hang your coat. We went to the Rent Commission. We got no repairs. The Rent Commission reduced our rent to $30. Then under a reconsideration by the Rent Commission they increased our rent to $35. Then for the next three years we failed to get any repairs. The CHAIRMAN. You paid $35 a month during those three years? Mr. NORFLEET. We paid $35 on the last increase. Then we failed to get any repairs from that time on. Then Mr. Linkins went to the Rent Commission, with my wife present Representative HAMMER. To get an injunction? Mr. NORFLEET. To get an injunction, yes-and stated specifically he was going to put us out because we had gone to the Rent Com mission. Representative HAMMER. To whom did he tell that? Mr. NORFLEET. To the Rent Commission. It is in the record. The CHAIRMAN. Did he make that statement to you, that he was going to put you out? Mr. NORFLEET. He made it to my wife, who is sitting right here back of me. The CHAIRMAN. He made the statement to her? Mr. NORFLEET. In the Rent Commission, that he was going to put us out because we had fought him before the Rent Commission. The CHAIRMAN. Did you get a notice of eviction yet? Mr. NORFLEET. We are out. The CHAIRMAN. When were you put out? Mr. NORFLEET. It is not a question of notice. We are out. I am telling you why we are out. We have been out two months now. The CHAIRMAN. All right; tell us why you got out. Mr. NORFLEET. Because he stated to the Rent Commission that he was going to put us out. The CHAIRMAN. But you did not wait for him to come and put you out? Mr. NORFLEET. No. He served notice on us, but he made that statement that he was going to put us out because we had fought him before the Rent Commission. The CHAIRMAN. Where are you living now? Mr. NORFLEET. We are living in a very nice house with a very nice lady. The CHAIRMAN. Is it not an apartment house? Mr. NORFLEET. No. We have put our furniture in storage until we can get a place, which we have not been able to find yet, that is worthy of consideration. My wife is here to substantiate what I have said. Representative BLANTON. Were you present when this Mr. Linkins made that statement to your wife at the Rent Commission? Mr. NORFLEET. I was. Representative BLANTON. You heard it? Mr. NORFLEET. He made it in another court. Representative BLANTON. Did you hear him tell her that? Mr. NORFLEET. He made the statement in the Rent Commission and it is in the records to-day of the Rent Commission that he would put us out. Representative BLANTON. Were you present when he made it? Mr. NORFLEET. I was. Representative BLANTON. You heard him say it? Mr. NORFLEET. Yes; I heard him say it, and he has made that statement since. Representative BLANTON. When you were evicted, were you evicted by a United States marshal? Mr. NORFLEET. No; we got notice and were decent enough to get out. Representative BLANTON. You just got out then when you got the notice? Mr. NORFLEET. Yes. Representative BLANTON. You did not wait for eviction? Mr. NORFLEET. No. Representative BLANTON. Did you owe him any rent at the time you went out? |