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Comment

Based on personal experience and that of many of my fellow tenants here in Kansas City, I'm convinced that the overall situation for those of us who rent our homes has gotten dangerously out of hand. For five years I rented from Mac Properties, a company that received $70.5 million from Fannie May to purchase and renovate buildings in Kansas City, and during that time I had to contend with bed bugs, black mold, insecure entryways, shoddy maintenance work and a roof hatch that went missing for months, allowing rain and snow to fall directly into the building and flow down the back stairway. All the while, my rent continued to increase annually and my landlord built luxury apartments, directly across the street, that were partly funded by my tax dollars. I'm sick of "business as usual" and seeing my hardworking friends and neighbors get priced out and displaced by companies that are obviously using tax abatements and federal government hand-outs to satisfy out-of-state investors under the guise of "cleaning up my neighborhood." I want to see realistic caps put on rent for all buildings that receive money from the government and for landlords who fail to properly maintain the properties that they own, as a result of receiving financial assistance, to have to forfeit ownership of said properties and pay back what they've been given.