(Nueva York, NY) On Thursday May 30th at 11:30 a.m., NACA and many others will attend the Invitation Homes annual shareholder meeting at the offices of Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett LLP, located at 425 Lexington Ave, New York, NY 10017. With this action, NACA launches its Invitation Homes Neighborhood Stabilization Campaign, to hold Invitation Homes, Blackstone and its major investors accountable for their devastating impact on affordable homeownership and tenant abuses.
Invitation Homes, with over 80,000 properties in 17 markets, is the largest owner of single-family property rentals in the country. They significantly limit the supply of affordable homes in many major markets including Atlanta, Charlotte, Jacksonville, Las Vegas, Orlando, Chicago, Phoenix and other areas nationwide. Greedy Wall Street investors with access to billions in financing are muscling out first-time home buyers and converting single family homes into rental properties, diminishing the long-term stability of these neighborhoods. Furthermore, as corporate landlords they are incentivized to squeeze as much profit from these rentals by any means possible. As a result, many Invitation Homes tenants are forced to endure slumlord conditions that include shoddy maintenance, predatory fee stacking, unnecessary threats of eviction, and outrageous and unaffordable rent increases.
“These homes now owned and rented out by Invitation Homes were previously owner-occupied, often by a low-to-moderate income families”, states Bruce Marks, NACA CEO. “They purchased many of these homes from lenders and investors who foreclosed on homeowners that were subject to predatory lending practices without the opportunity to save their homes.”
NACA will unite Invitation Homes tenants, along with NACA members and other local community members nationwide to demand changes to Invitation Homes’ business practices, including:
- Returning these homes to low-to-moderate income homebuyers
- Improved property maintenance without chargebacks or rent deductions
- Tenant oversight to ensure livable conditions
- Restriction of fees, rent increases and threats of eviction
- Increased regulatory oversight