Since then the housing shortage in countless communities, affecting millions of families, has magnified this call to action.

Today we face both an immediate emergency and a major postwar problem.

Since VJ-day the wartime housing shortage has been growing steadily worse and pressure on real estate values has increased.  Returning veterans often cannot find a satisfactory place for their families to live, and many who buy have to pay exorbitant prices.  Rapid demobilization inevitably means further overcrowding.

A realistic and practical attack on the emergency will require aggressive action by local governments, with Federal aid, to exploit all opportunities and to give the veterans as far as possible first chance at vacancies.  It will require continuation of rent control in shortage areas as well as legislation to permit control of sales prices.  It will require maximum conversion of temporary war units for veterans’ housing and their transportation to communities with the most pressing needs; the Congress has already appropriated funds for this purpose.

The inflation in the price of housing is growing daily.

As a result of the housing shortage, it is inevitable that the present dangers of inflation in home values will continue unless the Congress takes action in the immediate future.

Legislation is now pending in the Congress which would provide for ceiling prices for old and new houses.  The authority to fix such ceilings is essential.  With such authority, our veterans and other prospective home owners would be protected against a skyrocketing of home prices.  The country would be protected from the extension of the present inflation in home values which, if allowed to continue, will threaten not only the stabilization program but our opportunities for attaining a sustained high level of home construction.

Such measures are necessary stopgaps-but only stopgaps.  This emergency action, taken alone, is good—­but not enough.  The housing shortage did not start with the war or with demobilization; it began years before that and has steadily accumulated.  The speed with which the Congress establishes the foundation for a permanent, long-range housing program will determine how effectively we grasp the immense opportunity to achieve our goal of decent housing and to make housing a major instrument of continuing prosperity and full employment in the years ahead.  It will determine whether we move forward to a stable and healthy housing enterprise and toward providing a decent home for every American family.

Production is the only fully effective answer.  To get the wheels turning, I have appointed an emergency housing expediter.  I have approved establishment of priorities designed to assure an ample share of scarce materials to builders of houses for which veterans will have preference.  Additional price and wage adjustments will be made where necessary, and other steps will be taken to stimulate greater production of bottleneck items.  I recommend consideration of every sound method for expansion in facilities for insurance of privately financed housing by the Federal Housing Administration and resumption of previously authorized low-rent public housing projects suspended during the war.