WASHINGTON, D.C. – People’s Action released a statement by Homes Guarantee Campaign Director Tara Raghuveer in response to the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s (FHFA) analysis of their Request for Input on tenant protections:
“Today’s report by FHFA is a response to more than two years of organizing among tenants and allies. This report lays groundwork for substantial change to come, outlining potential pathways to improved habitability standards, eviction protections, and rent regulations.
“The rent is still too damn high. FHFA must use their regulatory authority to intervene in the gross imbalance of power between landlords and tenants. Supply-side policy will not be enough, and it will not address the peoples’ urgent needs. Tenants across the country wrote in to the FHFA with one core demand: rent regulations.
“We will continue working with the FHFA to protect tenants. The Homes Guarantee campaign remains committed to organizing tenants to ensure their voices are heard, their solutions are prioritized, and the federal government takes action on the single most important economic issue of our time.”
Background:
Since 2021, historic tenant organizing by People’s Action’s Homes Guarantee campaign brought delegations of tenants to engage with the FHFA, FTC, CFPB, Treasury, Congress, White House, and corporate landlords. The campaign organized a groundswell of support for the FHFA to regulate rent including Sen. Majority Leader Schumer, 17 U.S. Senators on the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, Ranking Member Maxine Waters and other U.S. Representatives on the Financial Services Committee; 32 leading economists; 143 academics; 73 climate researchers; and more than 70 local elected officials.
Tenants organized a massive response to the FHFA Request for Input including: the submission of over 2,400 comments by tenants and allies; 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 campaign also organized site visits between FHFA Director Sandra Thompson and tenants in federally-backed mortgages and published a memo making the case for rent regulations to address the rental supply gap.
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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 44 state and local grassroots power-building organizations in 30 states–united in the work of building a bigger “we.”
Contact: Johanna Kichton, press@peoplesaction.org, 202.660.0605