President Joe Biden’s administration, on Wednesday, announced new actions to increase fairness in the rental market and further principles of fair housing.
What Happened: The White House has said these actions align with a new Blueprint for a Renters Bill of Rights, which lays out a set of principles to drive action by the federal government, state and local partners, and the private sector to strengthen tenant protections and encourage rental affordability.
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has commended the effort saying it is an important first step to protect tenants and help make rent more affordable for families. “For too long, corporations have had free rein to raise rents unchecked, price gouging families and raking in record profits,” she tweeted.
The moves follow months of deliberations in the wake of decades-long inflation hurting the economy and sending rental prices soaring. Prices have remained high despite the overall inflation showing signs of a decline over the last few months.
The Federal Trade Commission and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have announced they will collect information to identify practices that unfairly prevent applicants and tenants from accessing or staying in housing in order to inform enforcement and policy actions under each agency’s jurisdiction.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency announced it will launch a new public process to examine proposed actions promoting renter protections and limits on egregious rent increases for future investments.
Necessary Steps: Erika Poethig, special assistant to the president for housing and urban policy at the Domestic Policy Council, told The Washington Post that this is something the president identified as being necessary on the campaign trail, and is not necessarily purely a product of the current surge in rents, because this is much more expansive than thinking about this in the context of rent growth.
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