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My name is Jamie and I live in Louisville, Kentucky. I am a member of the Homes Guarantee Campaign. Every day, I see people in my community — friends, colleagues, family members — struggling due to rent increases and lack of affordable housing. Daily I hear from colleagues who are facing eviction because wages are stagnant and not keeping up with rent hikes, and a single emergency situation has caused them to fall behind in their rent. Observing in eviction court over the past few years, where dockets are overflowing each day, has clearly shown me that we have a crisis on our hands, and people all around me are being kicked to the streets due to ever-increasing rents and rampant landlord greed. People are not disposable. Every tenant deserves protections and safe, affordable housing.
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,
Jamie