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Comment

My name is Matt Yourtee and I was a tenant living in Manchester, NH for two years. I am a member of the Homes Guarantee Campaign.

I was, because at a time when I needed to move into a new apartment, I discovered that a 1 bedroom unit had become more expensive than the 2 bedroom unit I was living in at the time and even reaching rents as high as the 3 bedroom unit I lived in with roommates the year before. I was ultimately forced back to live with family because a person cannot live in Manchester on their own wages anymore.

Rent is unacceptably high and landlords have all too few limits. 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. This should be universally applicable as a requirement to all federally backed mortgage programs.

But tenants are in a truly desperate place. Even more needs to be done. 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,
Matt Yourtee