HavenBrook Homes Campaign is Heating Up

Our HavenBrook Homes campaign is heating up! In early October, our tenants visited Washington DC. They met with Senator Tina Smith, Senator Elizabeth Warren, and Representative Maxine Waters. These legislators helped us get a hearing with the United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. On October 21, Sofia Lopez, Deputy Campaign Director at the Action Center on Race and the Economy, spoke against private equity in housing.

HavenBrook Homes - Compiling Fees, Lack of Necessary Repairs, and Pandemic Evictions

Lopez explained, “A common claim by the largest single-family rental landlords is that their institutional capital is professionalizing the single-family rental industry, but there are many tenants who are hurt by this so-called professionalization. For example, Dean, a leader at Inquilinxs Unidxs Por Justicia or Renters United for Justice in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

He moved in to a HavenBrook home unit and started to see fees pile up: a $10 property administration fee, a payment portal that would crash and trigger 8% late fees, and $25 service fees based on a requirement that Dean had already complied with…

In Minneapolis, HavenBrook tenants have reported waiting up to a year for essential repairs, including holes in roofs and ceilings, broken stairways, flooding, faulty electrical systems, broken appliances, pet infestations, black mold, and more. Tenants elect to either fix these themselves or live in unsafe conditions….

Even during a pandemic, Pretium Partners, the second-largest single-family rental landlord - which includes HavenBrook Homes, Progress Residential, and Front Yard Residential - led the pack having filed 2,000 evictions since mid-March of 2020.”

Creating a More Just Housing System

Lopez continues, “The clearest fix for private equity’s abuses would be establishing comprehensive, nationwide tenant protections from exorbitant rent increases, prohibition on excessive funds and fees, just cause eviction protections, and a tenant right to council to give tenants a fair shot in defending themselves. This would benefit tenants across all housing types….

In addition, there are many avenues to regulate private equity and housing by examining their financing, partnerships and mergers, concentration of ownership in particular communities, and shedding much-needed light on where and how they operate…

Our housing market is rapidly consolidating, and as the largest landlords, builders, and financiers increasingly partner with one another, our communities and neighbors will continue to feel the consequences unless we follow the lead of tenants and housing justice organizers in creating a more just housing system.”

You can view a recording of the hearing here: https://www.banking.senate.gov/hearings/how-private-equity-landlords-are-changing-the-housing-market