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Comment

Throughout my life I have experienced housing instability because landlords were always able to price us out of our home after 6 -12 months of living anywhere. Through my advocacy work, I speak with hundreds of tenants and community members in Las Vegas who are constantly facing housing insecurity with absolutely no protections being offered to them. The government directly gives money to landlords. The government is responsible for protecting tenants. Nevada has had the LOWEST quantity of affordable and available housing and the HIGHEST rates of eviction. Rents continue to rise year after year despite data proving that every $100 increase in rent, there is a 9% increase in the chance of eviction. All of this destabilizes Nevadans' income, health, education, and more.
We demand that the Federal Housing Finance Agency 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,
Shanzeh A.