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Hello, my name is Josh Poe and I am an organizer in Louisville, KY and a member of the Homes Guarantee Campaign. I have been deeply impacted by the housing crisis and spent several years as a houseless person. I grew up in a trailer in eastern KY and my sister and her family still live in that same trailer. I have no idea where my niece and nephew will live in Appalachia or how they will ever be able to afford a home given the current housing crisis.

I have been organizing in trailer parks in Louisville that are GSE enterprises, and the rent increases are out of control. The level of hopelessness and despair in these places is devastating and there is no reason for it other than pure greed. I know elderly tenants who have had to go back to work just to afford the rent increases. Routinely, families must give up necessities just to keep up with the rent increases. And the increases are coming regularly, and they will not stop unless the FHFA acts.

We would like to invite you to come speak to these residents.

The rent is too high. The Federal Housing Finance Agency 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 rights to organize, and create an Office of Tenant Protections to enforce these rights in all properties with federally backed mortgages.