DON’T PAY

MORE RENT!
Irving Howe

1
 A 21st Century Introduction

2017 ended with all new highs for rent prices in

Denver. Average rent prices for 1 bedroom apartments,
now at $1,385, has exceeded the average 2 bedroom
apartment prices of 2012. The stratospheric rise in
rents has helped create an environment where evic-
tions are becoming increasingly normal. People who
have spent their entire lives in Denver, are now finding
themselves priced out of their homes. The ever-in-
creasing rent is made worse by a stagnation of wag-
es, and hardworking people in Denver are seeing the
same amount of money that they’ve always made be
worth comparatively less than ever before. Thousands
of evictions have thundered across Denver, making an
honest living harder than ever to achieve.
This situation has had a paralyzing effect on renters.
People feel powerless and at the whim of the greed
of those who are seeing their lives become more
luxurious than ever before These landlords are making
unprecedented profits, while their renters are taking on
more debt just to survive. There’s a fear in renters.
Fear that even if they are currently making rent, that
they too will soon be priced out. Fear that an uncaring
machine will ravage their communities, only looking at a
cold percentage as justification, i.e. their rates of return.
Renters can clearly see that landlords are increasing their
luxuries while the renters themselves are grinding away
to make little income, barely able to keep up.
The reason I’ve begun sending out these pamphlets
is to show that the powerless feelings can be overcome.
The truth is that you are not powerless, and landlords
need you more than you need them. By reprinting this
decades-old pamphlet, I hope to show how renters
previously experienced what you are now experiencing.
I hope it will also show that there are solutions. These
solutions rely on developing collectives who protect the
rights of renters. For many, this may seem like a long-
gone notion, one that seems childish or utopian.
However, no generation in history is better equipped
to create strong Collective Action. My hope is that this
pamphlet inspires creative thinking on organization that
fits your community, rather than be a doctrine on what
you should do. The important thing to take from this is
that you should organize your community towards action
and protect your neighbors from eviction.
Some of the more revolutionary imagery may be
off-putting to my more conservative friends. However,
I strongly believe that my conservative friends and
neighbors will agree that your wage that you have
worked so hard for is in jeopardy. A rent increase
represents a pay cut, and you deserve better.

-K
 1947
This is a call to action. Every word in this pamphlet
is intended as preparation for action by tenants in the
present crucial rent situation. Every word is meant as
ammunition in the desperate fight which American tenants
have to wage against the landlords’ attempt to raise rents.
In that spirit this pamphlet is written; in the same spirit,
we hope, it will be read; and most important of all, in the
same spirit IT WILL LEAD TO TENANT ORGANIZATION
AND ACTION!
What we have to say is very simple. We propose that
tenants get together and organize on a house-to-house
basis. We propose that tenants refuse to pay any more rent
by taking a firm, united stand against the landlords. And
that while they are doing this, they also organize to fight
evictions in their neighborhood.
 To achieve this aim, we propose
the following specific steps:

(1) Organize the tenants in your house or block.

Each house should have a tenants’ committee, which
represents the tenants as a whole and is elected by all
the tenants. This committee should serve as the executive
organ of the tenants, leading their fight. Tenant committees
of the houses in a given neighborhood should get together
to coordinate their work and help each other.

(2) The first point on the agenda of the

tenants’ committee should be a
UNITED RESISTANCE TO ANY LANDLORD
ATTEMPT TO RAISE RENTS!
Under the law you don’t have to pay more rent . . .
unless you agree. And there’s no reason to agree.
As we will show later in this pamphlet, the landlords
are making UNPRECEDENTED profits. To agree to rent
increases is to give yourself a wage cut- Agree in
tenants’ meetings to refuse rent increases in a body.

DON’T PAY MORE RENT!

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(3) There will unquestionably be a wave of
landlord attempts in the next few months to
evict a great many tenants.

They will use all sorts of pretexts— “renovations,”

“need the place for themselves” and other legal dodg-
es allowed by the jelly-fish “rent control” bill recently
passed by Congress and signed by the President. IN
THE NEXT FEW MONTHS, THIS WILL BE THE MAIN
DANGER! As soon as a landlord serves an eviction no-
tice, get your tenants together; try to get the help of
your neighbors and the neighborhood tenants’ organi-
zation; and get busy.

How to Fight Evictions

(4) WHAT TO DO IN CASE OF

AN EVICTION NOTICE!
Tenants should utilize all possible legal
technicalities to fight eviction moves. (If court action
is indicated, cheap legal aid can usually be had from
local trade unions and tenant organizations.) But
remember that this is a fight that has to be fought by
the tenants themselves; it can’t be left in the hands
of lawyers, even your lawyers. That means tenants
threatened with eviction must do the following:
DON’T PAY MORE RENT!
 (a) USE MASS PRESSURE.
Run picket lines around the house you live in or
around the office of your landlord. If the landlord
is a bank or an insurance company with offices
in the main part of town— so much the better-
picket those offices where thousands of people
will see LET THE PEOPLE KNOW THAT “X”
INSURANCE COMPANY OR “Y” BANK OR “Z”
REAL ESTATE COMPANY IS TRYING TO THROW
TENANTS OUT IN THE STREET!

(b) GET WIDE PUBLICITY.

Newspapers are sensitive to the rent problem
these days. Notify the papers that you’re
going to picket. Have attractive placards. Get
wives and children out too; they’re affected as
much as anyone. Use imaginative stunts that will
be good for pictures; in New York City some
veterans pitched pup tents in front of the land
lords’ offices

(c) GET POPULAR SUPPORT

Get all sorts of organizations-trade unions,
veterans’ groups, neighborhood clubs-to support

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 you. Let them make miserable the life of the
landlord who wants to throw you out by
bombarding him with protests, petitions. In that
way the landlord will know that he has the great
mass of the population against him. And get
these organizations to join you in your picketing.

(d) IF THE EVICTION PROCESS GOES

THROUGH,
remember the United Auto Workers Flying
Squadrons plan in Detroit which promised to
put back the furniture of any one who was
evicted. That idea can be applied elsewhere.
No one should be thrown into the street just
because a landlord wants more profit!

Organize for an Offensive!

(5) TENANT ORGANIZATION SHOULD

WORK HAND IN GLOVE WITH THE LABOR
MOVEMENT OF ITS CITY.
Most tenants are themselves workers and union
members. A jump in rent is the same as a cut in wages.
If the union fights against wage cuts, it should fight
against rent increases. Get the unions out to help you;
get them to set up housing committees for their city

DON’T PAY MORE RENT!

or area. The unions can and should be the bulwark of
the tenants’ fight.

(6) DON’T ONLY TAKE DEFENSIVE

MEASURES; ORGANIZE FOR THE OFFENSIVE.
Make a strict check on the services given you
by your landlord. If any essential services are not
provided, report him to your local Board of Health
or Department of Housing or their local equivalent.
You also have the right to request rent decreases
from the local Office of Rent Control in cases where
services have been decreased. Be vigilant in defense
of your rights. (Editor’s note: an Office of Rent Control
does not exist currently in Denver. Demand one from
Governor John Hickenlooper)

(7) TENANT ORGANIZATIONS CANNOT

CONCERN THEMSELVES ONLY WITH
LOCAL ISSUES
So long as there is no adequate housing program,
there'll be a rent crisis. Together with trade unions,
veteran groups and neighborhood clubs they should
fight for such things as:

(a) Local legislation to declare a complete

moratorium on evictions so long as there is a

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 housing shortage.
(b) Local or state legislation to impose air-tight
ceilings on rents.
(c) An adequate housing program to relieve the
present shortage.

These, then, are a few of the things that have to

be done immediately. Wherever there is a branch of
the Workers Party — a party of militant socialism
which fights for the rights of the workers and of all
the poor — it stands ready and eager to help in the
rent fight. That is why the Workers Party is publishing
this pamphlet. In many areas, the Workers Party and
its members are already deep in the fight in behalf of
tenants' rights.

What Caused Rent Situation?

Now that we've discussed some of the things that

have to be done immediately— when you organize
your tenants' committee you'll discover other things to
be done, in accordance with your local problem — let's
take a look at the record to answer a few questions:
How did the rent situation get the way it is any why?
Who is responsible for the rent situation?
What have the landlords been up to? In a word: what

DON’T PAY MORE RENT!

is the background of the present rent crisis?

America has always had a shortage of decent

houses. To speak about one-third of the nation being
underhoused was something of an understatement.
Millions have always lived in slums— slums in the big
cities, shacks in villages and on farms. Despite all of
the wealth which this country had and could produce,
American capitalism never provided decent housing for
everyone.
…

Before the depression, there was a considerable

building boom in America. In 1925 there were 937,000
housing units constructed. The reason for this
comparatively large though still inadequate figure
was that there was a housing shortage after the
First World War when, incidentally, landlords tried
the same rotten stunts they pull now. But during
the depression housing lagged badly. In 1030 there
were only 330,000 housing units constructed and in
1937— when FDR was supposed to have patched the
jittery old capitalist system up a bit— there were only
336,000 units constructed. In 1941 there was a big
jump: 715,000 housing units. That was the last splurge
before housing construction ended.

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 So even before the war there was a shortage of
housing— especially of decent housing. That fact
is essential; remember it. In 1945 there were only
200,000 housing units constructed. Which means
that since thousands of units are destroyed each year
— through disintegration or fire or other causes —
housing construction was not even keeping pace with
the rate of housing deterioration.

During and after the war the housing situation

became extreme. Thousands flocked to the cities to
work in war plants. There were numerous marriages.
Housing construction virtually stopped. Result: a
tremendous housing shortage to the point where
millions— literally millions— are without homes. You
double up (alas) with your mother-in-law. You live in
a trailer. You use up most of your wage for a hotel
room. You move in on friends . . . and lose friendships.
You pay more rent than you'd have ever dreamed of
paying just to get a hole to park in. (And then you
toss in a little "present" to the landlord, who makes
it a condition for giving you an apartment.) Or you
fall prey to the "co-operative housing" and toss in
whatever you saved for a rainy day.
But whatever you do, you don't get a decent
apartment at a reasonable rental. That just isn't being

DON’T PAY MORE RENT!

done these days. Of course, you may have lived a
good bit of your young life in a foxhole in France
or in a fever-ridden hole in New Guinea or in a sub-
zero quonset in Alaska, and dreamed then of coming
back to a comfortable little place. But that was just
a dream; a dream fed to you by the organized dream-
feeding agencies of capitalism and its press and its
armies.

During the war, there was rent control. There had

to be— or the capitalist war effort would have been
disrupted. And so long as there was any danger of
that, the government made right sure that rent control
was fairly tight. For if there hadn't been rent control
the landlords would have gone hog-wild, especially
in the war-production centers, and that would have
created all sorts of difficulties for the war-production
program. That's why there was rent control.
As soon as the war was over, the landlords got to
work. Now who are these landlords? Are they some
special group of devils? No, they're not a special
group; they're the usual group of . . . They're the
very same bankers, investment houses, insurance
companies, capitalists who try to skin you alive in the

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factories and shops and who then skin you again in
the stores. The same capitalist who has investments,
say, in the plant you work in and gets profits, from
your sweat, is the one who has investments in the
food packing company which charges you outrageous
prices for meat and who has investments in the real
estate company which tries to extort fantastic rents
from you. The landlords are part of the capitalist
class— the enemy of the workers and poor people on
every front.

Congress Helps the Landlords

One thing you have to say about the landlords: they

were and are organized. Behind all their phony names
—we can't waste the space here to list the high-
sounding titles by which they disguise themselves —
they steadily worked away to knife rent control and
to prevent low cost public housing. What they wanted
was a continued housing shortage and a green light to
charge as much rent as they could.
In this noble cause they were helped by their
cronies in Washington. It stood to reason that the
Congress which passed the Taft-Hartley Anti-Labor
Bill— designed as a deadly blow at the rights of
American workers — would also be receptive to the

DON’T PAY MORE RENT!

desires of the landlords. Congress was ready to do
well by every section of the capitalist class. And
so under the leadership of Senator R. A Taft, the
reactionary Republican zombie from Ohio, and the
lynch-mob Democratic Senators from the South (who
intoned Claghornish speeches about "rent control is
against ahr institutions, suh...") Congress cooked up
that rotten, phony, crooked rent decontrol bill as full
of holes as a used-up lottery punchboard. And these
enemies of the American people, calling themselves
representatives of the American people, passed the
bill.
And Truman signed it.
He said he had to, that if he didn't sign it there'd be
no rent control at all. But that was just a weak excuse
for knuckling under to the landlord lobby, which had
done a terrific job in Washington. For already the OPA,
with Truman's tacit approval, had given the landlords
monetary lollipop after lollipop; it had rushed to the
defense of poor, stricken landlords (suffering under the
burden of the biggest profit rake in history) with that
nonsense about "hardship cases." And Truman had let
it get through.
Naturally he signed the bill. It was part of
the whole trend of the capitalist government in
Washington— part of the trend which wrecked price

15
control and passed the Slave Labor Act, part of the
trend which shelved the anti-lynching bill and knifed
the minimum wage bill. It was the trend to open attack
on the workers and the poor people, where formerly
there’d been a relatively disguised attack.

Landlord Profits Shoot Upward

Then came the deluge. Landlords began to

put pressure on tenants. Hotels, which had been
completely decontrolled by this new legislation,
increased rentals up to 400 per cent. (One case
was reported in Colorado where a man was charged
more rent per month than he earned at his job.)
The landlords cried that they were at last getting
"justice"— increases in rent to make up for increases in
costs. Well, let's take a glance back and see if that is
so.
Here are some facts- According to a recent survey
initiated by the Office of Price Administration,
landlords of large apartment houses increased their
net operating income during 1945 by 25 per cent over
their net operating income in 1939. (Net operating
income refers to the landlord's profits after all
expenses are paid.) Similarly, landlords of small houses
(those containing less than five apartments) increased

DON’T PAY MORE RENT!

their net operating income by 43 per cent.
One of the main reasons why landlord profits
increased was that they no longer had vacancies to
cut down their profits. During pre-war years there
was a “normal" vacancy rate of 15 to 20 per cent in
apartment houses; landlords' profits were calculated
on that assumption. In 1939 when there was already
a housing squeeze that vacancy rate dropped to 9
per cent. And of course during the last few years it
dropped to zero. Thus, even during the years when
rents were stationary, landlords got a greater total
profit from their properties. Which proves that all their
weeping about "losing money" was hokum.
For the fact is that during the year of 1944, landlords
took in a total profit of $1,180,000,000 — nearly twice
as much as in 1940.
The same OPA report to which we have referred
said further: "While wage rates and prices increased
considerably during the war, landlords’ total
expenditures were kept close to the 1939 amount." For
large apartments, expenses rose five per cent but for
small ones expenses actually dropped seven per cent.
And finally there was always the OPA around to help
the landlords. The OPA lent a willing ear to landlords
when they complained about "hardships" and since
rent control went into effect it has granted over a

17
million individual rent increases. The rate of granting
rent increases has gone up: for example, from August
to September 1946 it doubled. Since September 1946
it has continued to go up. The landlords have found a
helping hand in the OPA.
Mind you, we aren't worried at all about landlord
profits. We have presented these facts here just to
show what liars and hypocrites they are when they
scream about the "need" for greater rent levels. But
even if the landlords were not doing well, even if they
had to struggle along on a mere 50 million a year
profit level rather than a 1 billion a year profit level,
that wouldn't be any skin off our back or yours. Our
primary interest is in the poor people of this country—
the great mass of workers, lower salaried employees,
professionals, etc., who are having one devil of a time
trying to make ends meet in this time of inflationary
price rises. It is their interest — the interest of the
vast majority of the people that comes first, last and
always — not the interest of the landlords.

What happened after the new rent bill was passed

is so well known that we don't have to go into much
detail on it here. The landlords had a field day— or

DON’T PAY MORE RENT!

they thought so. Hotel owners started jacking up rents
as if they were bidding in pinochle. Landlords started
coercing tenants to sign leases with rent increases
with none too subtle hints that if tenants refused
they'd be evicted when federal rent control went out
of existence.
Congress had given the landlords a blackjack to use
against tenants — and the landlords used it!

What We Got from the "Present"

And landlords devised all sorts of new schemes to

work it rich. They had people, desperate for a place
to live, "buy" an apartment and then proceeded to
evict the tenants of the apartment that had been
"bought." (This was an "improved" variant of the
scheme whereby prospective tenants are forced to pay
several hundred dollars on the sly in order to get an
apartment.)

The landlords had still another possibility— the
most dangerous of all for tenants. The new law has
a loophole wide as a barn which says that a landlord
can evict a tenant if he needs the place for himself or
if he intends to "renovate" the apartment. After such
renovations, the apartment is no longer under rent

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control and the disadvantages of this are obvious to
the tenant. So the landlords have started a swarm of
eviction proceedings. (Editor’s note: Landlords can still
do both of these things in Denver as of 2018. Though
there would likely be no reason, rent control does not
exist in Denver.)
In New York City alone the number of eviction
warrants issued from July 1 to July 7 increased 82 per
cent over the corresponding period of a year back. In
Cleveland two additional judges were assigned during
the same week to hear eviction cases in municipal
courts. In Detroit court calendars are jammed with
eviction cases. Thousands of people are in danger of
being thrown out into the street!
That is the result of the mess cooked up by the
capitalist politicians in Congress. Even where tenants
succeed in fighting off evictions, they will have to
lay out hard-earned money for court expenses. (The
new law takes evictions out of the hands of the
rent control agencies and puts it directly into the
hands of the courts — courts which have never been
notorious as defenders of rights of the poor.) This is
the "present" they have given to us. Let us remember
that "present" by organizing our own party, a party of
independent labor politics, and driving the agents of
capitalism out of Washington.

DON’T PAY MORE RENT!

 …

That, in brief, is the rent situation. It is a highly

explosive situation, one which will explode in the faces
of millions of workers unless they act and organize
now. We have already mentioned our main ideas on
what to do, at the very beginning of this pamphlet.
Here we should just like to say a few words on housing
in general before we wind up on the rent situation
again.
Obviously, if there were enough housing, there'd
be no rent problem. Then you could tell your landlord
to go fly a kite (or some colorful variant thereof)
when he asked for a rent increase, and find yourself
another place to live. But now you can't do that.
We've mentioned before that the reason for this is
that housing virtually came to a standstill while the
American capitalist government was at war.

Rent, Housing and Capitalism

But here we come up against an interesting

question. We're not going to enter into a long
discussion of housing plans here. But we think that
LABOR ACTION, a weekly socialist paper hit the nail

21
on the head when it recently wrote:
"Let's put the matter in its most basic form. Here's
a situation where millions of people are without
housing. . . . There is no evidence that sufficient
housing will be built in the coming period. Private
housing construction is not doing the job— and
the houses that private contractors are building are
obviously at too high a rate for most people.

"An interesting question arises:

"Why doesn't the government step in, set up a
gigantic housing program on a low rental basis; run
the housing program so that landlord profit may be
eliminated and break all material bottlenecks that
exist, as they were broken during the war?
"The job was done for tanks and planes and
ammunition. When the government dominated
industry then, nobody cackled anything about
'private enterprise.'
"IF THAT COULD BE DONE FOR TANKS AND
GUNS, WHY NOT FOR HOUSES?
"Or are houses less important than tanks and
guns?
"Let's put it this way. Capitalist society, in which
we live, is more interested in providing weapons
of destruction than in providing decent places for

DON’T PAY MORE RENT!

people to live. That isn't merely our opinion. It is a
fact which anyone can prove to himself by merely
comparing the record of the government during the
war on armament production and its record after the
war on housing.
"And there is no more damning contrast on the
rottenness of capitalist society."

But let's get back to the immediate situation. As we

said in our first paragraph, this is a call to action. We
hope the first thing you do after reading this pamphlet
is get a tenants group organized in your house, or that
if you have one, you galvanize it into action.
Already there are encouraging reports from various
parts of the country. The Detroit Times of July 10
reports that 250 tenants of the Blaine Tenants Council
met in a local high school and pledged themselves to
refuse to pay more rent. That's the way.

We Can Fight Back!

In New York City, tenants of a section of the lower

East Side have set up a tenants' group called the
University Tenants Council which even has a grievance

23
committee that functions regularly and takes up day-
to-day tenants ' complaints. This group is affiliated to
a larger tenants' organization which takes in the entire
lower East Side.

Other tenant outfits have been organized in various

parts of the city.

The writer of this pamphlet participated in an

interesting tenant action a few months back. He was
then living in a renovated rat hole (and we mean rat
hole!) on which the landlord was getting rich but for
which he refused to give any repairs. The tenants
organized and when the landlord gave them no
satisfaction, the tenants all discovered at the first of
the month that they just couldn't get around to paying
rent. They were all simultaneously broke. The landlord
got the idea and started making his repairs; the
tenants were no longer all broke.
In fact, rent strikes have a great tradition in this
country; they're not just a stunt thought by up "reds."
If you can strike against your boss because he doesn't
give you enough money, why not strike against your
landlord when he takes away too much money? After
the last war, there was a great wave of rent strikes
and there was one during the depression That's

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something to keep in mind for the rough days ahead.
So there it is, folks. Landlords out to skin us alive—
and if we want to prevent that, we must organize.

The Workers Party again urges you to:

ORGANIZE TENANTS' COMMITTEES.

FIGHT FOR LEGISLATION TO DECLARE

A MORATORIUM ON EVICTIONS.

FIGHT TO PREVENT EVICTIONS OF ANY

OF YOUR NEIGHBORS.

DON'T PAY MORE RENT!

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DON’T PAY MORE RENT!