NLIHC President and CEO Diane Yentel testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights on October 24 at a hearing, “Examining Competition and Consumer Rights in Housing Markets.”
Diane appeared before the Subcommittee with four other witnesses: Vanessa Brown Calder, director of opportunity and family policy studies at the Cato Institute; Luis Quintero, assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Cary Business School; EJ Antoni, research fellow at the Heritage Foundation; and Maurice Stucke, professor of law at the University of Tennessee College of Law.
In her testimony, Diane explained how the lack of national renter protections leaves tenants – and particularly tenants with the lowest incomes – vulnerable to unjust treatment, housing instability, and evictions. “Landlords can engage in abusive and predatory behavior with few consequences,” she said. “Renters facing exorbitant rent increases or excessive fees have little to no ability to move to a new home. Instead, renters can face retaliation for reporting unsafe housing conditions or illegal actions by landlords, and because so few renters have access to legal representation, many are unable to assert their legal rights.”
Diane argued that strengthening and enforcing federal renter protections is one critical solution to the nation’s housing crisis and urged both Congress and the Biden administration to take immediate action to protect low-income and marginalized households from housing instability, eviction, and homelessness. In addition to speaking in support of renter protections, Diane noted that long-term, sustained investments from the federal government – including to bridge the gap between income and rent, invest in new and preserve existing affordable housing stock, and create a permanent emergency rental assistance program – are needed to end the nation’s affordable housing and homelessness crisis.
Read Diane’s testimony here.
Watch a recording of the hearing here.