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I have been a tenant for over 25 years in 2 different metropolitan areas - New York City and Miami-Dade County, Florida. In both places there has long been a critical lack of affordable housing, and the situation seems to have only gotten worse in the past year. At least when I was in New York there were stronger tenant protections. I think it’s important for the federal government to do whatever it can because housing is an essential need, and local or state governments in places like Florida are often under the influence of real estate moguls who want to limit tenant protections to increase their profits. Rents keep rising in the Miami area and my pay has not kept pace. Since I got married and had a child this has become even more of a problem because children need space and as a public school teacher I can’t afford to give my child the space she needs. We have even been evicted with very short notice due to complaints of one cranky neighbor who exaggerated the amount of noise my toddler and me made. There was no process for us to plead our case and the landlord could just throw us out with a month’s notice - in the middle of a pandemic and when I had also lost my job. We had to move in with my wife’s parents, with my family of 3 crammed into my wife’s childhood bedroom. I believe tenants deserve dignity, strong limits on how much the rent can be increased from term to term, stronger protections against unfair evictions, and processes for resolving landlord-tenant disputes that give tenants more options - such as withholding rent if the landlord fails to uphold their end of the bargain. Cockroaches have also been a frequent issue in many of past apartments and landlords - with the exception of my current one - usually have not done nearly enough to eradicate them. Please use your power to help tenants as much as possible. Most of us are poor, working-class, or middle-class, which means in an unregulated market we are at the mercy of landlords who have more money and political power. But you can help balance the scale.