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My name is Hope-Lian and I am a tenant living in Kansas City, MO. I am a member of the Homes Guarantee Campaign.

During 2020 I worked on the KC Tentants Hotline and saw firsthand how people were evicted from their homes during a global pandemic. We were a tenant-run hotline where the only things we could provide were referrals to a legal clinic with limited capacity, difficult to acquire city resources, and the assurance that they were not alone. We spoke to individuals whose homes were rotting around them, whose landlords were retaliatory, and whose heating would go out in the middle of winter during a year of unprecedented cold temperatures. We live in a future of climate disaster and uncertainty, and people aren't even able to be safe in their homes.

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.

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,

[INERT FIRST NAME]