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  • Comment Detail

  • Date: 07/31/23
    First Name: Christina
    Last Name: Ostmeyer
    Email: christinaostmeyer@gmail.com
    Organization Type: other
    Organization: KC Tenants

  • Comment

    My name is Christina Ostmeyer and I am a leader with KC Tenants, Kansas City’s citywide tenant union.

    Our neighborhoods should be places where we are able to know our neighbors, build communities, and have consistent access to systems that help us thrive: healthcare, education, and beyond. Safe, truly affordable housing is at the foundation of this vision, yet in the system as it is, where housing is treated as a commodity instead of a basic human need, tenants are forced to live at the whims of large developers and landlords. In Kansas City, where I live, companies like Mac Properties have utilized government-backed loans to buy up dozens of properties in Kansas City, resulting in massive gentrification and displacement of poor and working-class residents while simultaneously maintaining substandard and unsafe living conditions. This predatory behaviour should not go unchecked.

    The rent is too damn high. Mac, which continues to raise rents and housing prices in Kansas City, is just one of thousands of examples of for-profit companies utilizing public programs and tax dollars to harm communties. The pandemic and the simultaneous economic fallout compounded deep the racial wealth gaps and injustice inherent to our housing system. Rent prices and homelessness continue to hit record levels, and I'm tired of seeing my friends, loved ones, and neighbors priced out, having to jump through hoops just to survive.

    When people are able to stay housed in quality living conditions, our entire communities benefit. The FHFA has a significant opportunity curb tenant exploitation and materially improve the lives and opportunities of millions of people. Below are protections that should be implemented:

    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.