Word: rent
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...line with its new policy RKO offered to rent a 16mm print of "Abe Lincoln la Illinois." Yesterday the HLU executive committee voted to apply for this film for April...
Today the Senate will start debate on extending rent-controls, which expire March 31. The House has already passed its own rent-ceiling bill. Neither of the measures follow the administration's original plans. The great gap between supply and demand in available housing means that just how far these bills are modified during the next few days will probably affect the national economy as much as any other legislation facing Congress this year...
...original federal rent controls were a wartime measure, but they were drawn up to meet a serious problem that was rooted well back before the war: the fact that American builders cannot afford to put up housing for people who need it. Even in the depression year of 1933, with an estimated 5,000,000 vacant dwelling units, there was a 20 to 30 percent shortage of housing facilities for lower income groups. The causes for this condition continue, most important being the high cost of building materials and capital, ancient and discriminatory building codes, and restrictive measures by unions...
...powerful real-estate lobby in Congress is doing its best to emasculate these controls. The real-estate men are claiming that the ceilings have made building unprofitable and are therefore prolonging the housing shortage, that rent controls are making it impossible for landlords to get a "fair return" on their money...
Both arguments are invalid. There was a serious low-rent housing shortage (and it is in low-rent housing that the present shortage exists) before controls were even considered. The 1933 figures show this. And the present federal controls include "hardship clauses," especially written to let the landlord secure rent-hikes if he can show that his income is seriously falling relative to his costs. More than that, for the last few years real-estate operators have been using leases as a very effective anti-tenant weapon, keeping people paying on an insecure month-to-month basis, unless they agree...