Tenant Organizing Delivers Big Step Forward with Rent Cap Plan from Biden/Harris

WASHINGTON - People’s Action today applauded President Biden’s announcement of a plan to cap rents for tenants living in corporate-owned properties and to invest in public housing as part of a package of reforms aimed at getting housing costs under control for poor and working-class families. The announcement comes after years of tenant organizing by People’s Action’s Homes Guarantee campaign and allies, which have focused on federal action to address ever-increasing housing costs and regulate the rent.

“Biden’s rent cap plan is a big step toward our vision of a country where everyone has a safe, accessible, sustainable, and permanently affordable home–a Homes Guarantee,” People’s Action Campaigns Director Sondra Youdelman said. “Greedy corporate landlords are driving up costs for working class people of every race, gender, and background–and when we organize together, we can win.”

Organizing Gets the Goods

Over the past three years, People’s Action’s Homes Guarantee campaign, the organization’s state-based member groups, and grassroots leaders have pushed for federal action to regulate the rent and condition federal backing of mortgages for rental properties on price hike restrictions and otherwise protect tenants. Key moments include:

• A “Tenant Takeover” in Washington, D.C., in Nov. 2023 with more than 100 tenant leaders, which included meetings with public officials and a press conference with congressional leaders, calling for rent regulations and presenting President Biden with a draft executive order. Tenants also took direct nonviolent action to fight back against corporate landlord Starwood Capital. View photos from the Tenant Takeover here and live-streams here.
• A massive tenant response organized by the campaign to an FHFA Request for Input on tenant protections 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.
• Site visits organized by the campaign between FHFA Director Sandra Thompson and tenants in federally-backed mortgages, along with a memo making the case for rent regulations to address the rental supply gap.
• A protest outside the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the lobbyists of the biggest corporate landlords in the country, the National Multifamily Housing Council, in July 2024, demanding an end to excessive rent hikes and for the FHFA to regulate the rent and protect tenants.
• A memo shared by the campaign with the White House in 2022 from 200+ legal partners and housing justice and tenant-led organizations, urging actions to curb rent inflation.
• Historic organizing since 2021 to bring 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.

The Stakes in 2024

“Organizing is how we make big change in this country, and voting sets the table,” People’s Action Executive Director Sulma Arias said. “We have a set of additional protections for which we are organizing under the Biden/Harris administration in our People’s Platform, and we will get there by organizing renters, unhoused people, and low-income home owners. By contrast, under Project 2025, Trump wants to be our greedy landlord-in-chief and raise costs for renters so his corporate donors can make more profit.”

Project 2025 calls for gutting government programs designed to get costs down for working-class people, including the $35 billion Biden/Harris Housing Supply Fund, which supports construction of affordable housing.

Biden’s full list of reforms includes rent caps, calling on state and local governments to build affordable housing, repurposing federal land for affordable housing unit construction, and to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to rehabilitate distressed housing, build more affordable housing, and revitalize neighborhoods across the country. The plan also calls on state and local governments to invest in public housing. President Biden also recently announced new protections requiring notice for tenants when leases end and a grace period before imposing late fees.