Dear Mr. Wyatt:
This country is faced by an acute shortage of housing. Veterans are returning to homeless communities. Former war workers have come back to their home towns, and have found no place in which to live.
It is urgent that every available temporary living quarter be used in over-crowded communities, that the production of building materials be expedited, that the production of homes be hurried, that the cost of housing be protected from further inflation.
I am asking you to assume the role of housing expediter in the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion. I am asking you to search out all bottlenecks at whatever level of industry or of government--local, state or national--you may find them; to try to break those bottlenecks; and to make the machinery of housing production run as smoothly and speedily as possible, so that we may be able to make the peace production of homes equal to the task of housing our veterans and other civilians.
Very sincerely,
HARRY S. TRUMAN
[Honorable Wilson Wyatt, Louisville, Kentucky]
Note: This letter was made public together with a report on housing submitted to the President by John W. Snyder, Director of War Mobilization and Reconversion. The report, in the form of a memorandum dated December 8, was read in part at the President's news conference of December 12 (see Item 211).
Harry S Truman, Letter to Wilson Wyatt Appointing Him Housing Expediter Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/230165