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My name is Emma Rehac and I am a tenant living in New York City. I am a member of the Homes Guarantee Campaign.

I am 21 years old and I have moved 19 times in my life. I am currently couch surfing while dealing with health issues that limit my ability to work. Having a space to call my own where I feel safe and secure feels like a far away dream because of violent rent increases, unsafe conditions, and predatory landlords.

I am no longer able to stay with my mother and sister, they moved due to rent increases a year and a half ago. After one year in their new apartment their rent is being increased 46%. My sister is going to graduate high-school at the end of the year, and my mom plans to move back to her home country because she cannot afford to stay in America, where she has been living for the past 34 years. They are now faced with the choice of moving again now, just to have to move again in the summer, or to cut back on spending on all other necessities.

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.

Emma Rehac