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My name is Dom and I am a tenant living in Phoenix, AZ. I am a member of the Homes Guarantee Campaign.

I make a decent living between my full time job and occasional creative gigs. I was evicted a year ago because my landlord wanted to renovate the ADU I lived in so he could rent it as an AirBNB. To find a place I could afford within 10 miles of my job I took on 2 roommates and my third of the rent equaled 38% of my monthly pay. There have been several times in the last year that I had to borrow money or use a credit card to make ends meet. That is stressful and I have it better than so many people around me. We are about to sign to extend our lease and our rent went up a little over $200 per month. I have no choice but to find the money but providing new actually affordable options would be a great use of our tax dollars. My community and family needs relief. We need housing 20% AMI. We need rent control. We need protections from housing discrimination.

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,
Dom