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Comment

My name is Kevin Criscione and I am a tenant living in Manchester, New Hampshire, and a member of the Homes Guarantee Campaign. In my time renting in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, I have seen multiple landlords increase rent while ignoring basic repairs and tenant requests. In one situation, our landlord ignored requests to repair a partially collapsed stairwell while increasing our rent. The safety and financial health of working families should not be determined by whether or not your landlord wants a new boat.

This agency has the power to make significant improvements in the lives of our nation’s poorest tenants. The FHFA should protect tenants by limiting annual rent hikes to 1.5 times the Consumer Price Index or 3%, whichever is lower, in properties with federally backed mortgages. These limits should be applied universally as a requirement to all federally backed mortgage programs.

In addition to limits on rent hikes, the FHFA should prohibit evictions without good cause, ban source of income discrimination, enforce and expand existing protections against discrimination, require safe and accessible housing conditions, create a landlord registry, require fair and standardized leases, ensure tenants have the right to organize, and create an Office of Tenant Protections to enforce these rights in all properties with federally backed mortgages.

Sincerely,
Kevin