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My name is Abby, a tenant living in Washington DC and a member of the Homes Guarantee Campaign.

While I have only been renting for 4 years, in those 4 years my rent has creeped upwards to be almost surpassing the recommended 1/3 of your income limits. I work in social services with people experiencing homelessness, so my earning power is not likely to increase much due to the undervaluing and underfunding of my field. This makes me concerned for the future. If I want to have a family, I will have to seek more or different work. I should be able to afford a place on a full time salary, yet landlords are too greedy for personal enrichment to allow this.

Additionally, I see this regularly in my work. The highest correlating factor to a places rate of homelessness is not mental illness, drug use, or even poverty rates, but housing costs. Here in DC, we have far too many people who were pushed out of their homes and now fall deeper and deeper into homelessness. Many of these folks have trauma and challenges beyond what you or I can imagine, but still would be able to afford an apartment were they offered at a more reasonable price. But how can I, in good faith, assist someone to access a short term rental program when I know rents for a one bedroom in DC are regularly exceeding $2,000 - meaning many folks leave homelessness only to fall back into it when a landlord harasses and discriminated against them while charging thousands of dollars for a modest studio apartment.

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,
Abby