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I live in half a duplex. My spouse has lived in our apartment for 6 years, originally with roommates, then we married and I moved in, and 2 years ago our daughter was born. The landlord stopped mowing the grass 2 years ago. The gutter on the second story has never been cleaned in the last 6 years, and ripped away from the building over 3 years ago. We have submitted evidence of the damage over 30 times and gotten false assurances the landlord would send out the maintainence guys. We've submitted pictures. The damaged gutter has caused mold and mildew to grow in the brick and rotted out the subfloor twice, causing our next door neighbors' dishwasher to fall through it, and their child to be injured in the last 3 years. It was replaced once and needs to be replaced again. The linoleum has cracked and loosened and started breaking into pieces in our apartment, exposing the subfloor, and we have told the landlord a number of times, called maintainence, and submitted pictures a number of times over the last year with no effects. The dishwasher broke, and it took us over a year to get the landlord to replace it, then the very cheap new one broke within a month, and we've been using it as a drying rack for the last year. We have taken to routinely doing most repairs that we can afford to do ourselves, and doing our own pest control, because our landlord does essentially no maintainence or upkeep on the property.

Our landlord is the biggest one in our town (Combs, in Berea KY). I rented from him in a 10-unit 2-story apartment building before I got married. The wooden steps were never maintained or repaired in the years I lived there, and steps were splintered, spongy, uneven, and one was missing. Several senior citizens and children were injured on the steps, including one senior citizen who broke her hip. Despite multiple requests from multiple tenants, those steps were never fixed while I was there and still haven't been fixed.

Combs routinely gets exemptions from local ordinances mandating two means of egress from dwellings when building new apartments. There was no back door on the second-story apartment I lived in before I got married, which is typical for Combs-built properties. We feel like he can get away with this because there's such a housing shortage. We don't want to move because it's very hard to find an apartment in our town. I am a nurse and my spouse is a nurse aide.

I wish there was a form of recourse. We've reached out to tenant organizations for help with no luck. We haven't gone so far as to hire a lawyer. We don't want to get on the bad side of the landlord who owns a significant majority of the rental property in our town, and his family holds multiple local elected and appointed offices, as well as much commercial real estate. This is the way it is in many central and eastern Kentucky towns, one last name holds political and real estate power, and you don't want to get on their bad side.

There should be manditory protections applying to all landlords with a federally backed-mortgage, and all rental properties. Tenant protections should not be voluntary or incentive-baced. There should also be enforcement. Landlords who violate FHFA’s tenant protections should be found to be in technical default and should not be eligible for future loans. We should not have to live in a home that could put the health and safety of our child at risk, we should have the right to organize, and we should be protected from egregious rent hikes.