Last week, a coalition of 18 national real estate organizations, including NAIOP, sent a letter to the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) asking that the agency reject imposing rent regulation as a condition of receiving financing from Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) created to increase liquidity for housing markets. The letter was in response to FHFA’s request for comments arising from the Biden administration’s January release of a “Blueprint for a Renters Bill of Rights.”

Noting that rent control creates a disincentive to increasing the supply of affordable housing, the letter asks FHFA to reject proposals that would mandate rent control for any project receiving lending from the GSEs, and instead focus on creating “additional voluntary incentives within the GSE programs to expand the supply of needed affordable housing.” The letter, which was also sent to members of Congress, stated that rent control “is nothing more than a politically expedient response to the increased cost of housing... it results in a reduction of the available supply of rental housing and increases costs for those most in need.”