Word: rent
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...been an acrimonious week. The last hope of cooperation between the Both Congress and the President seemed to have run out. Harry Truman had already vetoed five bills. Early in the week he had signed the rent-control bill (TIME, July 7), but with gall in the ink: "I have chosen the lesser of two evils . . . this legislation marks a backward step in our efforts to protect tenants against unjustified rent increases. ... It is unthinkable that the Congress would actually take steps to make more difficult or even impossible the efficient administration of the Government's present activities relating...
...inadequacy" of the bill, said the President, would be painfully evident in the annual loss of $400 million in unpaid taxes. He thought the "vast majority" of U.S. taxpayers were honest, but he also implied that a chiseling minority could now succeed in evading the law. But, like the rent bill, he indicated, it was a choice between evils. Holding his nose and glaring at Congress, he had signed...
...rent-control bill was scarcely law before landlords pounced. Many a hotel promptly changed its permanent guests to steep transient rates. In Atlanta, one hotel slipped notices under the door at midnight June 30, ordering long-term tenants to vacate by midnight July 1 unless they paid by the day. Typical rate: a single room was upped from $82.50 a month to $7.50 a day ($225 a month...
...Chicago one hotel raised permanent guests from $70 to $150 a month, another from $32.50 to $71. In New York, increases ranged from 15% to 200%; in Denver up to 350%. In San Francisco, an old-age pensioner sharing a single room had his rent boosted from $25 to $40 a month. In Chicago, a third-rate hotel jumped rooms from $7 a week to $17.50. Even the flophouses along Detroit's grimy Skid Row upped dormitory beds from 30? a night...
Life in a Tree. Frantic tenants stormed the rent-control offices. After three boiling days, the Los Angeles acting area director wearily closed his desk for the weekend with a final word of advice: "Don't move. Stay where you are. Wait until your landlord takes your case to court before you obey any eviction notice...