It is a ceaseless, blinking beacon of distress and hope, flashing around the clock for the past 10 years in the office of Community Alliance of Tenants, or CAT. It is the tenants' hotline, channeling the complaints and concerns of renters from across the state of Oregon. After answering 20,000 hotline calls in the past decade, the folks at CAT have a pretty good idea of what's troubling renters — repairs, and negligent landlords who won't do them.
Two years ago, CAT made organizing renters around repairs a priority, and in January published a report on substandard housing research. Today, the organization is leading a push to beef up protections for renters and improve safe housing in Portland.
"You have more protections buying a microwave than you do renting an apartment," said Elisa Aguilera, an organizer with CAT. One example leaps to her mind as to why changes are needed.
"In one building in the Northeast, folks called our hotline and wanted to get information about moving," Aguilera said. "They had been living in horrible conditions for about five years at that point. They were following all the rules, everything that they were supposed to be doing they were doing right, but they could not get their repairs. Half the units had no heater. One family went five years without a heater."
But they really didn't want to move, Aguilera said.
"They had chosen to live there originally because they liked the school district, they liked the neighborhood. Their grocery stores, their doctors offices, their work were all in that neighborhood and to pick and move and to find somewhere else that was affordable was just not likely. But their kids were getting sick because they were living there."
The families were low-income, and most didn't have cars, limiting mobility. Some relied on relatives living next door to help take care of the children. There was a rodent infestation. Many windows and doors didn't have locks, and there was no weather stripping to keep the cold out, Aguilera said, ticking off just some of the problems with the apartments.
But rent was affordable — around $500 a month for a two-bedroom — and the landlord promised to make repairs when folks signed the lease, Aguilera said.
As time went by, the conditions in the apartments led to health concerns, including respiratory problems among the young children.
"This one little boy sounded like a squeaky toy, it was that bad," Aguilera said. "He was three months old. That was very disconcerting…. The parents said that as soon as they go on vacation, they're better. Two days out of there and the kids are doing just fine."
Through working with the advocates at CAT, lawyers and city building inspectors, the tenants eventually got their apartments repaired — ventilation and heating was installed, the mold infestation cleaned out, and repairs were made. But it was a long slog through an unfriendly process — months passed as fines eventually elevated to a level that prompted action by the landlord. When the penalty reached $5,000 in advance of a code hearing, the work was done within two weeks.
"Obviously, a conclusion could be that that code hearing stage is effective, but it just takes too much and too long, if it ever gets to that stage," said Karen Thalhammer, also an organizer with CAT.
According to the 2003 American Housing Survey of the U.S. Census, more than 3.5 million renters in the United States live in substandard housing with severe or moderate physical problems. In Portland, 8 percent, or nearly 7,000 families lived in rental housing units that had severe or moderate physical problems.
Research shows that substandard housing is associated with morbidity from infectious diseases, chronic illnesses, injuries, poor nutrition and mental disorders. Infestations of mold, roaches and rodents can trigger allergies and respiratory problems. The lack of adequate heat and hot water can lead to illness. Taking care of a child suffering under these conditions often means time away from work and financial hardship. And being forced to move because of these conditions can disrupt a child's support network and schooling, according to research compiled by CAT.
However, renters who challenge their landlord to improve the housing conditions often do so under the threat of eviction through Portland's no-cause eviction law. Even though tenants can legally withhold rent for repairs not made, landlords can counter with a 72-hour eviction for failure to pay rent, and laws against landlord retaliation are ineffective, according to Thalhammer. (CAT doesn't recommend renters withhold rent unless they are already working with a lawyer.)
How many renters are evicted for requesting repairs is difficult to track, said Thalhammer. "But what we have found in this study is how many people don't do things because they're afraid of being evicted," she said.
CAT is pushing the city to adopt a just-cause eviction, in which landlords would be required to give a reason for evicting a tenant.
"They have those in Seattle, L.A., San Francisco, San Diego — every city on the West Coast has a just-cause policy," Thalhammer said. "It's effective — one, because it gives people protection to get repairs made and two, because it protects against all the other reasons people get evicted that are unjust and unfair."
CAT is also proposing several changes to the city's Title 29 landlord tenant code, including:
CAT is also a stakeholder in the city's Bureau of Housing and Community Development's efforts to establish a Healthy Homes Workgroup. If approved by the city, workgroup will be charged with creating greater access and maintenance of affordable and habitable housing that is free from environmental health hazards. Thalhammer said their efforts will help bring some equality to the tenant-landlord relationship.
"Just having the power of your housing hanging over your head is such an imbalanced relationship," she said.