The Brooksville Journal

RENT BILL:
Buck Was Passed

The rent control question was red hot. Congress knew it. The people knew it. But something had to be done before controls expired March 31. Congress had to do something. It did. It passed the buck.

A rent control bill was drafted by the 81st congress, but it laid in the laps of state governors and legislatures the real power and responsibility for rent controls.

EVERYTHING congress wrote into the present bill can be nullified by a governor or a legislature, if they see fit.

The bill continues rent controls for 15 months, or to June 30, 1950. It sets up a "home rule" process for decontrol of states, cities, or other local areas. Legislatures could remove controls throughout a state, or in parts of a state. A city government, or ruling body of other communities, could pass a resolution calling for de-control and, if the state governor approved it, then the federal government would be forced to abolish controls in that community.

The bill requires the housing expediter to fix rents so as to insure landlords a "fair net operating income . . . as far as practicable." However, it restores old OPA powers for the rent expediter to control evictions. This, some congressmen said, would prevent any mass evictions by landlords.

UNDER THE MEASURE, the housing expediter is authorized to sue a landlord for three times the amount of any charge made against a tenant above the legal rent ceiling. Under old law, the tenant had that power, but seldom used it.

The new act does not authorize further 15 per cent "voluntary" increases in rents, and recontrols any dwellings decontrolled under such voluntary leases, at the rent figure contained in such leases.

Veterans' priority for first chance to rent or buy a new property are continued in the bill.