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My name is Brittany and I am a tenant living in Louisville,Kentucky . I am a member of the Homes Guarantee Campaign.

I am in touch with multiple whose rent has been spiked just this month . Both me and my mother work 2 or more jobs with everyone in our apartment also working at least 1 job to try and make ends meat to buy food and pay rent and other things . Rent and housing prices have been getting higher and higher while minimum wage has stayed close to the same amount for years . My mother and I for a few years where house hopping from family member to family member hotels and motels and even just sleeping in the car due to not being able to affrod to rent and apartment or house .

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,

Brittany <3

P.S. (some fun facts you should know )Landlords are raising rents at the highest rates in over 40 years.
Median rents in the U.S. have risen nearly 20% in the last two years alone.[1]
Nationally, median rent has surpassed $2,000 for the first time ever.[2]
In 2023, there is not a single state where a worker employed full-time at the federal minimum wage can afford a modest two-bedroom apartment