A national US tenant movement is rising out of a crisis that has seen rents spiking 20 percent over the past two years, increased corporatization of the nation’s rental housing, and evictions on the rise. Tenants from multiple states, including some who were evicted during the pandemic, have laid out a housing reform program and demanded meetings to lay out their demands to Housing and Urban Development (HUD) secretary Marcia Fudge and multiple other Biden administration officials. Tenants also convened a congressional briefing on rent inflation hosted by Senator Elizabeth Warren, Representative Jamaal Bowman, and other members of Congress.

But the result of that advocacy so far hasn’t been much beyond a new, weak statement by the Biden administration claiming to include renter protections. “The White House announcement introduces potential for agency-level action, but falls short of using the full power of the administration to regulate rent and address market consolidation by corporate landlords,” says Tara Raghuveer, a Kansas City–based tenant advocate and director of the People’s Action Institute’s Homes Guarantee Campaign.

Tenant groups have been demanding that Biden order federal agencies to cap rent increases on properties with government-backed mortgages, an order which would cover nearly one-third of US rental housing and require a similar rent-control commitment from states and cities that seek federal Community Development Block Grants. The tenants’ agenda also calls for aggressive investigations of unfair trade practices by institutional landlords and good-cause requirements for lease nonrenewal or eviction from housing funded by federal tax credits. Their argument is that landlords and local politicians may boast about the private market’s beneficial role in housing, but they should be forced to provide basic renter protections if they want to keep dipping their hands into the federal government’s multibillion dollar housing till.