Comment Detail

Comment

Director Thompson,

I am a property manager located in CA in the industry for over 20 years.. Based on experience Federal Rent Control and/or Tenant Protections will be an absolute failure. The US housing market is extremely diverse and very local. Many Controls and/or Protections will not only be redundant but over reaching and inappropriate in most areas throughout the Country. These Controls/Protections should be put in place at the local level (State, County, Local Municipality) and in many cases already are. the Emergency Tenant Protections put in place at he CA State and Local levels by over zealous and in many cases incompetent bureaucrats has left a large swath of housing providers in peril of loosing retirement income and potentially their property with the upcoming avalanche of foreclosures on the horizon. The Emergency Rental Assistance Programs covered merely half of the outstanding rents due to housing providers over the course of the Pandemic and has left in its wake a huge amount of Rent Debt that is unlikely to ever be recovered again putting housing providers in a position of immense liability. The Controls and Protections passed (many during the Pandemic as Emergency Ordinances) in CA State and at the local levels have constituted a taking of private property rights and are in direct violation of the 5th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. These same Controls/Protections at the Federal level will face far more scrutiny and will only end being a short lived, ill conceived experiment and ultimately found illegal.

Thank you for the opportunity to respond to your Request for Input (RFI) on how the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), in its oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, can best provide affordable housing opportunities for renters. Approximately 40% of the National Association of REALTORS®'s (NAR) 1.5 million members own at least one rental housing unit, playing a vital role in providing safe, quality, and affordable housing in neighborhoods nationwide.

As the FHFA examines ways to improve access to affordable housing, it is critical to acknowledge the most significant driver of housing unaffordability is the limited supply of available housing. According to NAR data, the United States has an underproduction gap of over 5.5 million units – a key underlying reason housing costs have increased. On top of this, inflation has increased the prices of goods and services for all Americans. As housing providers strive to provide affordable housing opportunities in their communities, they also contend with rising mortgage rates and increased costs for supplies, services, and maintenance. When inflation is high, the prices of materials increase. That means it becomes exceedingly more expensive for construction teams to build new homes or renovate existing ones. Ultimately, these high costs spill into the housing market and lift home prices for new builds and existing housing.

As REALTORS®, we are committed to upholding the very specific provisions of our contracts with residents, and we often go above and beyond what is required to ensure residents have safe, quality, and affordable places to live. Rental housing is a deeply complex issue that is unique to every community. Creating additional layers of policies to a space that is already heavily regulated by state and local governments will have severe unintended consequences for renters as housing providers are leaving the market in communities where affordable housing is sorely needed.

Affordable housing is pivotal to creating paths to upward mobility for people across the country. I appreciate your commitment to ensuring we achieve this goal without impeding the creation of much-needed housing supply. Ralph Watkins