Tenants Organized 2.4K Comments Demanding Federal Rent Control With Support from Leading Economists, Academics, Climate Researchers, and Electeds
WASHINGTON, D.C. – People’s Action’s Homes Guarantee campaign today celebrated the strength of the tenant movement by releasing letters that make clear that federal tenant protections are common-sense policy with broad support from experts and directly impacted tenants.
“Tenants are coming for rent regulations, and everyone from senators to economists agree: tenant protections are common sense,” People’s Action Homes Guarantee campaign director Tara Raghuveer said. “Due to lack of regulation, affordable housing is lost quicker than it can be built. Corporate landlords call the shots with federal financing through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That’s why tenants spent this summer organizing to win what we need: federal tenant protections like caps on annual rent increases.”
The campaign released letters written and signed by 32 leading economists and 143 academics to register their support for the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) conditioning federal financing with tenant protections and limits against egregious rent hikes. Sen. Majority Leader Schumer in addition to 17 U.S. Senators on the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, 73 climate researchers and more than 70 local electeds also sent letters to the FHFA in support of rent regulation.
Raghuveer continued, “The FHFA will hear from the industry that benefits from the status quo. Their story will be the same as ever: regulation will change their business. That’s exactly the point.”
Historic tenant organizing with the Homes Guarantee campaign led to the FHFA’s Request for Input. Throughout the process, tenants organized a massive response including: tenant meetings with FHFA’s senior leadership team, a website to collect responses to the FHFA, a 1,000-person direct action at the National Multifamily Housing Council, a canvass in which tenants knocked 5,165 doors, the formation of five new tenant unions, and the submission of a comment and letter signed by 317 housing justice organizations. The Homes Guarantee campaign will soon publish a brief highlighting the tenant organizing around the FHFA’s Request for Input.
“Everyone deserves a safe, accessible, and truly affordable home. We will continue working with the FHFA as they analyze the comments and begin drafting policy to ensure it centers tenants. It’s time for federal rent regulations,” Raghuveer said.
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People’s Action builds the power of poor and working people in urban, rural, and suburban areas to win change through issue fights and elections. We are a national network of 40 state and local grassroots power-building organizations in 29 states–united in the work of building a bigger “we.”
Contact: Johanna Kichton, press@peoplesaction.org, 202.660.0605