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Comment

My name is Nataly and I am a tenant living in Tucson, Arizona. I am a member of the Homes Guarantee Campaign.

Every year landlords have raised my rent, sometimes by 8%, without making improvements or essential repairs to their properties. I work full time as a teacher, but my wages have not increased at the same rate by a long shot.

While I haven’t been evicted, I’ve been priced out of reliable housing close to my workplace. Like countless others, I lose hours and wages to the costs of commuting. Every time I’ve had to move, I lose money to rental applications and “administrative fees” regardless of actually signing a lease.

All of this is because 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,
Nataly