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Abigail, Bozeman, my boyfriend and I were forced to move to Bozeman for his job as tech opportunities are limited within our hometown of Great Falls. Rent here was so insane that I had to start working full time as a full time student to help him afford even with a tech job. Rent alone makes it so we are left with little savings, thus making owning a home one day even more impossible seemingly. We knew rent was getting bad everywhere, but it’s insane.

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.