Mr. DUPREE. No sir. The one I gave you is solely through litigation. The other figure is settlements prior to litigation, which is a figure of $2,800,000, the majority of which went to tenants and the rest to the United States Government.

Senator DIRKSEN. None of those funds are covered into your own appropriation account, are they?

Mr. DUPREE. No sir.

Senator DIRKSEN. Have you on your own initiative decontrolled any area since the present act, as amended, came into effect?

Mr. Woods. A small number, Senator.

Senator DIRKSEN. Have you listed them?
Mr. WOODS. I have the total.

get the list of the names of them.

The total, I believe, is 16. I can

Senator DIRKSEN. You don't have to give them now, but I think it would be interesting to have the areas, the number of units that would be involved. I suppose you keep that data too, don't you? Mr. Woods. Yes sir.

Senator DIRKSEN. And how they were decontrolled-on your initiative?

Mr. Woods. We will first set up all of the decontrol actions that have happened since August: those on our own initiative, those upon recommendation of local rent advisory boards, those that went by local option.

Senator DIRKSEN. Insert in the case of each area the method by which it moved in to establish a decontrol.

Mr. Woods. Yes sir, we can do that. (The information requested follows:)

Fifty-four defense rental areas recontrolled or controlled for the first time; Aug. 1, 1951, to Mar. 26, 1952

Forty-nine areas recontrolled

NOTE.-All areas recontrolled during this period, with the exception of Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Mineral County, W. Va., were critical defense housing areas.

Five areas controlled for the first time

NOTE.-All areas controlled for the first time were critical defense-housing areas.

Twenty-four areas under limited control on July 31, 1951, which have since been

Senator DIRKSEN. I think, Mr. Chairman, that's all.
The CHAIRMAN. Any further questions, gentlemen?

Senator SCHOEPPEL. I would like to ask one question of Mr. Woods, to clear up one phase of the thing.

In fairness to the way your agency has administered the act in relation to the local boards, or the local groups that have been set up by municipalities, I think there are cases in my own State, in Wichita, Kans., wherein the mayor and the city authorities established, shortly after the installation of the Air Force base in that city, by proper ordinance, a local rent-control group that had made certain studies and recommendations with reference to area rentals in certain sections of that city.

If my memory is correct, I think that your agency, after some little time looking into it, took that rental group as your operating or advisory group in that city; did you not?

Mr. WOODS. Yes, sir; that is true.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me make a statement before we recess.

I want to say that, because of several meetings tomorrow morning, some of the committee members suggested that since they would like a quorum at these meetings, we meet at 11 o'clock. So, when we recess, we will recess until 11 o'clock tomorrow morning.

The other thing is that we have a bill here that has passed the House, a joint resolution, in connection with direct loans to veterans, on which the House had considerable hearings. People have been after me about getting legislation started-veterans' organizations and others.

Does this committee desire to take the House hearings and study them, or does this committee desire to have hearings on this bill? Senator DIRKSEN. What bill? I'm sorry, I didn't hear.

The CHAIRMAN. There is a bill that passed the House authorizing the making of additional funds available to the Administrator of Veterans' Affairs for direct farm loans for eligible veterans under title III of the Servicemen's Readjustment Act.

What I would like to know is if it is the desire of the committee to hold hearings on this, or would the committee be satisfied with the hearings that were held in the House. We also have a report from the House. I presume there would be the same witnesses again. This committee has had no requests to be heard.

Senator DIRKSEN. I think the committee ought to make provision at least for 1 day, in case somebody does want to be heard.

The CHAIRMAN. Suppose we make provision for 2 days so that, if anybody does want to be heard, they can be heard. Nobody has requested it, but we will do that.

Senator SCHOEPPEL. Mr. Chairman, the House hearings are all printed and are available?

The CHAIRMAN. The House hearings are available; yes.

Senator MOODY. Mr. Woods, I'm sorry I wasn't here during all of your testimony today, but do you have figures showing the movement of rents in areas that have been decontrolled?

Mr. Woods. On that, Senator, we haven't had any surveys; we haven't made any. We have had to rely on the Bureau of Labor Statistics. On one set of figures we have a comparative figure showing what happened to all commodities, including rent, after decontrol, in a group of selected cities. We do have that. We have the percent of change since decontrol in a selected group of decontrolled cities. Senator MoODY. What does that show?

Mr. Woods. In every instance it shows an upward trend.

Senator MOODY. Does it show a sharper upward trend than in other cities?

Mr. WOODS. Yes; it does, Senator. I can say generally that decontrolled cities, from mid-1949 to January of 1952, show a rise of 23.1 percent, as against a rise of 7.9 percent in controlled cities. It is sharper in certain periods. From September 1939 to November, December, and January of 1952

Senator MOODY. You mean 1949; don't you?

Mr. WOODS. No; this one goes way back. This is a long study. It shows a 57.8-percent increase as against a 30.3-percent increase in cities that have been continuously under control.

Senator MOODY. How many cities were in that survey?

Mr. WOODS. Nine cities.

Senator MOODY. Do you have for the record what those comparative cities are?

Mr. Woods. Yes, sir. Birmingham, Ala.; Houston, Tex.; Jacksonville, Fla.; Los Angeles, Calif.; Milwaukee, Wis.; Mobile, Ala.; Norfolk, Va.; Richmond, Va.; and Savannah, Ga.

Senator MOODY. Those are which?

Mr. Woods. Those are the cities used in the decontrol study of the increase since decontrol in those cities.

Senator MOODY. One thing that kindled my interest in this was the statement that was made the other day by one witness that Los Angeles, which was decontrolled, showed a favorable trend downward. They made the point that decontrol in Los Angeles had reacted favorably.

Mr. Woods. That isn't so, Senator, because when you take all of the cities that the BLS survey covers, since mid-1947, the general average is 25 percent up. Los Angeles alone is 39.2.

I have heard that remark several times. The study that I would like to see sometime about Los Angeles is what happened in the lower brackets. There, in my opinion, it was shameful. It was above 60 percent.

Senator CAPEHART. Sixty percent above what period?

Mr. WOODS. Above the controlled rent.

Senator MOODY. Mr. Woods, is there any authority whatsoever in the law providing for a minimum standard of decontrol? Is it possible for an area where the local government happens to be particularly influenced by a group that is interested in decontrol to get decontrol even though there was an infinitesimal amount of vacancy? Mr. WOODS. We use the standard in decontrol, but with localoption decontrol; no, sir. You probably remember we fought that through the courts, and the courts told us that it was none of our business.

Senator MoODY. There have been a number of cities where it has come to my attention there was a local-option decontrol but they had sharp increases in rent.

Mr. Woods. When a city passes a local decontrol ordinance, all we look at is to see that they have followed the Federal law, that they have held a public hearing, and that the local governing body has sent us a resolution which states that in their opinion there is no longer need for Federal rent control.

Senator MOODY. What is your system in areas that are under Federal control for taking care of hardship cases? I have had landlords come to me and point out that costs have gone up and they haven't been able to get what they considered to be action. What is the system that you have been following?

Mr. WOODS. Senator, in the present regulation there are 14 different provisions for getting rent increases. Outside of the one we discussed here earlier, the one that was put in by statute, we ourselves recognize the increased-cost provisions even over and above the 20 percent that Congress put in the act; and we do say this: that it is 20 percent you are entitled to, regardless. If it is over 20 percent, we insist that they do prove it to us on their individual property. But the grounds are there, particularly for cost increases.

You might be interested to know-I keep coming back to these boards because these boards are really what run rent control todaythat the Baltimore Rent Advisory Board recently took this question of cost increases to their landlords up, and published a schedule for everybody to read, everybody in the community to know about, for adjustments that the Baltimore board was going to give for various cost increases.

For example, I remember one: the establishment of a bathroom. You may remember Baltimore had quite a project on about a year ago to rehabilitate old properties. They had an unusual number of habitable dwellings with outside plumbing, and the city began to get after some of these landlords. The landlords said, "We'll do it, but we feel we should be compensated in increased rent."

The rent advisory board took it over, and I can remember this figure because it was talked about so much. They agreed that they would, for a three-piece inside installation in a bathroom, guarantee a $5 increase, plus $5 for each $1,000 that it cost.

That was one.