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My name is Ellen Glover and I am a home owner living in Kansas City, Missouri. I am a member of the Homes Guarantee Campaign.

After over a 15 years of renting, my husband and I were able to buy our first home last year. I was pushed out of living in the city of Chicago because rents were too damn high and now I see the same rent increases coming to Kansas City. I'm worried about my friends, neighbors and community members being pushed out by corporate landlords hiking rents. For the last year, my friend who works a full time job and has a college degree was homeless - bumping around from couch to couch when her studio apartment rent hit $1200/mo. With student loans to pay and ever growing bills, this is untenable.

In 2023, there is not a single state where a worker employed full-time at the federal minimum wage can afford a modest two-bedroom apartment. Nationally, median rent has surpassed $2,000 for the first time ever. That's more than I pay for my monthly mortgage.

I worry about my husband, child and I ending up homeless if we were to hit a bump in the financial road with unexpected medical bills or a natural disaster and not being able to afford rent.

The rent is too damn 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 right to organize, and create an Office of Tenant Protections to enforce these rights in all properties with federally backed mortgages.

Sincerely,
Ellen Glover