Jennifer Whitten

Dear Representatives, Please oppose HB1709. I am a 56 year old native born U.S. citizen who has lived in NH for most of my adult life. I moved to Denver for 2 years during Covid and when I returned, in 2022, I went through the process of looking for housing in the Seacoast, since I had been hired to work at a Portsmouth company. Based on this experience, I am strongly against adding more hoops and barriers to the housing search process. Trust me: it is already hard enough to find a place and sign a lease. They already ask for all kinds of things. I had a landlord ask to see my bank account balance, including the account number. They want managers to verify employment, employers to verify salaries, vets to write testimony about dog breed and vaccinations, character references from 3 people... I prepared to sign a lease and was asked for first and last month's rent: $2400.00 security deposit for me, and an additional $2400.00 security deposit for my dog, for a total of $9200.00. The place filled up with mold when it rained, there was standing water in the basement, and no one was willing to do anything, so they gave my deposit back. If you think this new bill is going to take care of some significant problem in NH, I disagree. We have only a handful of immigrants in this state, here legally or not (and based on the dictates of my heart and human decency, everyone needs housing). The problem is, as you know, a dearth of affordable housing (thank you, to all who are working on making more housing available - I know it takes time and diplomacy). AND - this is important - the problem with this bill is that it asks landlords to do something that is beyond their expertise. They are not legal experts. They are not qualified. "Landlords" encompasses a wide variety of people, quite a few of whom are biased in favor of people who look like me (white, with blond hair) and against people who look like my friend Hisham, who became a U.S. citizen after legal entry here from Sudan and eventually got a job at a National U.S. agency. While legally in our country, he was pulled over 5 different times in one month on days he was driving to visit me, and was let go each time because there was no basis for pulling him over. When my biracial stepkids were in the car, we were pulled over for no reason, too. HB1709 would further encourage biased thinking by putting housing providers in a legally precarious role of evaluating people based on their immigrant status and their nationality. This is prohibited under federal and state housing discrimination laws. This bill could put landlords in a double bind. Perhaps property management companies can afford lawyers to deal with legal fallout. Please consider that *many* housing providers in our state are not property management companies. The people I've rented from have often owned 1-3 buildings, and were renting out the other half of their duplex, a downstairs apartment, or a second small house on the same property. No matter who they are, landlords cannot and should not screen tenants to establish citizenship or immigration status, based on Federal law. Please vote against this bill so that our state doesn't become complicit in encouraging housing providers to treat tenants differently based on citizenship, nationality, or ethnicity. Doing so will also put them in a bind because they may incorrectly determine whether or not a potential tenant is lawfully in the U.S. and incorrectly report their status, opening them up to potential for other legal challenges. This bill has the potential to harm a lot of people - from housing providers, to tenants of many varieties, to the state itself, which may find itself facing future lawsuits. Thank you for reading. Respectfully, Jennifer Whitten