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My name is Kristina Diggs and I am a tenant living in Louisville, Ky. I am a member of the Homes Guarantee Campaign.

I live in a privately owned apartment building currently where I am subjected to increasingly poor living conditions while receiving rent increases. My washer and dryer has never worked since I lived there. We had a man squatting in our hallways and my landlord refused to take any security measures until enough of us complained because we are all single and living alone and were scared. My maintenance man cussed me out after he complained about me “forcing the landlord to take security measures “ because he was the man who has to do the work to fix the security. Created a very hostile environment to live in for the rest of my stay but I could not afford to leave the aggressive situation because rent is too damn high everywhere else around me. I should not be subjected to live in a hostile environment just because the rent is too high everywhere else in my city. We need rent control now.

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,
Kristina Diggs