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My name is Hannah Appel, and I live in Los Angeles California, one of the epicenters of our national housing crisis.

While I am now a homeowner, my family rented until 1.5 years ago, and all of my students (I teach at UCLA) rent, or try to. Rent prices are extraordinarily high. In fact, 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. Nationally, median rent has surpassed $2,000 for the first time ever.
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. This is a disgrace. But there is also something we can do!

The Federal Housing Finance Agency MUST 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 these limits, 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,
Hannah