White House Releases Renter Bill of Rights
January 30, 2023
Last week, the Biden Administration released its Blueprint for a Renters Bill of Rights, which proposes several federal initiatives and numerous aspirational goals designed to protect renters. Click here for the White House fact sheet on the Blueprint.
Why it matters: The Blueprint does not create any sweeping changes for landlords, but lays out five principles toward beefing up renter protections, such as notice requirements, eviction protections, and rent increase caps. The amount of federal action is limited at this point to collecting data, studying options, or implementing minor rulemaking on agencies (like HUD and the GSEs) that regulate government-backed loans.
Go deeper: Key actions of interest to multifamily finance, include:
- GSE Study on Rent Increases: The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) will conduct an open process to “identify the opportunities and challenges of adopting and enforcing tenant protections including policies that limit egregious rent increases….” The process would include stakeholder engagement and periodic updates beginning in six months.
- FTC and CFPB Data Collection: The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) will solicit feedback and data to understand how they can use their authorities to “take action against acts and practices that unfairly prevent consumers from obtaining and retaining housing.”
The big picture: the largest area of potential risk and likelihood for change for CREFC members and the housing rental industry in general are FTC and CFPB action. Both agencies have broad authorities to take action on “unfair” practices and could use that authority to take enforcement actions against specific companies for perceived violations.
What's next: although an initial focus could be on tenant credit screening and background services used in selecting tenants, it could expand to eviction practices, rent increases, and debt collection. Institutional landlords are likely to be a key target.
For the GSEs, the Blueprint highlights a number of features of the scorecard and mission-driven criteria already in process. There could be cause for concern on the “egregious rent increase prevention policy”, but the Blueprint does not mandate any outcome, incorporates ample industry engagement, and would only apply on a go-forward basis.
Our thought bubble: The Blueprint represents more bark than bite, at least for the time being. Still, the blueprint does not discuss increased costs facing housing providers nor does it discuss the net impact of some of the proposals.
What’s next: CREFC will continue to engage with FHFA and policymakers on this issue in particular and housing issues in general. Please contact Sairah Burki (sburki@crefc.org) or David McCarthy (dmccarthy@crefc.org) with questions.