Shaky hands. Pounding fists. Long letters. Urgent meeting requests. Temper tantrums and threats to leave City Hall — or the city altogether.
These are just a few of the reactions from corporate lobbyists, landlords and real estate developers to a new city ordinance that would ban algorithmic price fixing, according to multiple city councilors and evident in public testimony.
Through full City Council meetings and committees, city councilors heard a barrage of public testimony. More than 100 community members signed up to testify, pushing a scheduled meeting into a second day. Behind the scenes, a picture emerged of an upended power structure at City Hall, where advocates for renters hold new power under Portland’s updated form of government, opening the doors that well-connected business elites have long closed behind them and angering those used to directly influencing city politics.
The ordinance seeks to address a scenario seen in cities across the United States in which landlords indirectly coordinate rent prices through the use of algorithmic software. While antitrust laws have existed since the late-1800s, the increased use of artificial intelligence allows real estate investors to skirt those laws by outsourcing pricing norms to the software.
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In response, local officials want to modify the city’s affordable housing code to protect renters — who historically had little voice at City Hall — from businesses that use the software.
“Currently it is the case that landlords for over 32,000 units in Portland are gathering in a conference room to share their most sensitive competitor data with each other to set rental prices and agree to set those prices in unison,” Suzy Deuster, policy advisor for City Councilor Angelita Morillo told the Housing and Homelessness Committee March 25.
Though slightly fictionalized, the assertion captures the heart of an issue City Council wants to halt in the digital realm, a practice some city leaders, and the U.S. Department of Justice, say amounts to price fixing.
Morillo, city councilor for Southeast Portland’s third district, introduced the ordinance to ban “anti-competitive rental practices including the sale and use of algorithmic devices.” In the March 25 meeting, Morillo said ending the practice will help alleviate high rent costs as housing affordability remains a primary concern.
“We know that 47% of Portlanders are renters, and they deserve to have some representation on the City Council and have their needs centered,” Morillo said. “We also know that the homelessness crisis on our streets is going to continue, and get even worse, if we don’t do some of the changes that we need to do now.”
Sharing private business data across an industry to collectively set prices is illegal because it removes free market competition between landlords who would otherwise compete to provide housing more favorable to renters. It allows landlords to artificially increase rents by feeding otherwise sensitive, competitive data into the algorithm — like rent prices, lease terms and occupancy rates. Landlords then receive recommendations back from the software so they can raise rents in conjunction with other landlords.
Soon after Morillo introduced the ordinance Feb. 25 in the Housing and Homelessness Committee, city councilors faced mounting pressure from opponents, including the preeminent rental algorithmic software company RealPage; Portland Metro Chamber, a local business advocacy group and lobbying firm; Multifamily NW, which represents property managers who collectively represent 200,000 local units; and Portland Metro Association of Realtors, a trade association representing 7,500 members in the region.
City Council Vice President Tiffany Koyama Lane said some of the response is expected. The new 12-member City Council includes four members of the Democratic Socialists of America, and five councilors pledged to pursue tenets of the Renters’ Bill of Rights.
“A huge power shift is occurring,” Koyama Lane said. “There are folks that are used to having access to every elected in City Hall in a way that is not quite the same anymore, now that there is true representation for Portlanders.”
Changing the vibe
Portland is not alone in its move to add algorithmic price fixing to existing anti-competition laws. The Oregon Legislature is currently considering a bill to ban it at the state level, and four cities — Minneapolis, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Berkeley — have all issued bans, with others considering similar laws.
Still, the city could face legal threats over the proposed ban, as others have.
RealPage sued the city of Berkeley and asked for a preliminary injunction April 2, just one week after the city passed its ordinance. A press release from RealPage said the ban was based on false and misleading information about its products, arguing the ordinance is unconstitutional and suppresses lawful speech. Further, RealPage alleged the ordinance bans algorithms that use any information to recommend rent prices.
Like they did in Berkeley, corporate landlords balked at the proposed Portland ordinance. They presented an array of arguments criticizing the process, attempting to reject any new landlord-tenant regulations, and claiming in a letter that landlords using Google, Zillow or Microsoft Excel could mistakenly violate the ordinance.
“In the normal course of business, landlords may need to disclose rent information with other people and companies, who may themselves be landlords,” a letter from Swift Public Affairs, a local government relations firm, said.
Zillow, for its part, is not opposed to the ordinance because it does not use data in the same way, saying it has been supportive of similar efforts in other cities and states, according to public records obtained by Street Roots.
“We understand and share concerns that some market participants are coordinating to share nonpublic competitor information in an effort to maximize rent prices, which negatively impacts affordability in an already expensive housing market,” the email said. “However, we also believe some applications of algorithm technology provide benefits to consumers, powering tools to bring transparency to a complex real estate market.”
A now-deleted White House report published in December 2024 said anticompetitive algorithmic pricing costs renters an average of $70 more per month in buildings that use the software — as high as $181 per month in Atlanta. Overall, renters paid an additional $3.8 billion in 2023 due to the software, according to the report.
“Our analysis indicates that if price coordination was eliminated, there would be an economically meaningful decrease in price mark-ups for rental units using pricing algorithms,” the report said.
The analysis noted that the price fixing software can affect rental rates across an area, not just at the buildings in which it is used by landlords.
“Moreover, the estimates likely understate the true aggregate cost of landlords using algorithms to collectively maximize profits because they do not include the price effects on rental units that do not use pricing algorithms,” the report said.
Portland’s proposed ordinance comes in light of multiple lawsuits against RealPage. Filed in August 2024, a U.S. DOJ complaint argued the software violated federal antitrust laws by removing the competition renters are entitled to, including the Sherman Act, passed in 1890, and the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914. Both of those laws are intended to uphold competition as a central rule of trade.
“RealPage replaces competition with coordination,” the complaint said. “It substitutes unity for rivalry. It subverts competition and the competitive process. It does so openly and directly—and American renters are left paying the price.”
Oregon joined that ongoing lawsuit, and multiple co-defendants operate in Portland. Landlords named in the complaint operate more than 1.3 million units in 43 states and the District of Columbia, according to the complaint.
The local realtors’ association fiercely opposing Portland’s proposed ordinance is no stranger to the sharp end of litigation either. The National Association of Realtors — of which Portland Metro Association of Realtors is a member — settled a lawsuit in November 2024, paying $415 million in damages after a nationwide class action lawsuit forced the U.S. DOJ to investigate violations of antitrust laws.
Even so, local business advocates fiercely oppose the ordinance. Multiple city councilors told Street Roots that a gaggle of corporate lobbyists descended on City Hall after Morillo introduced the ordinance, sending letters, offering amendments, requesting urgent meetings, at times engaging in heated discussions with councilors both in private meetings and public testimony.
Representing the Portland Metro Association of Realtors, Swift Public Affairs sent multiple letters to city councilors arguing that the $10,000 fee landlords could face for violating the law is an existential risk for local housing investments, and claiming the language defining which information landlords can share could ensnare small landlords who own just a few units and use spreadsheets to track rents. An amendment proposed by Morillo April 2 passed with an 11-0 vote, creating a tiered fee system for smaller landlords.
Still, multiple business-connected lobbyists — including Portland Metro Chamber Executive Vice President of Public Affairs Jon Isaacs, Block 216 (home of the Ritz Carlton) representative Brian Owendoff and others — provided public testimony saying price fixing is already illegal at the federal level, and enacting a local ban could stifle housing investment and production in the midst of a housing crisis.
“The proposed ordinances allowing tenants to sue based on suspicion of unfair practices is both impractical and unjust,” Owendoff said. “While concerns about anti-competitive practices in rental software may be valid, the regulations of such technology and its application should be handled at the federal level, not through local ordinances.”
The opposition broadly cited confusion within the text of the ordinance as a reason for opposing the bill, while simultaneously sowing confusion by inserting misleading claims about what the ordinance does and does not prohibit. Those claims largely mimic RealPage talking points, claiming the ordinance bans public information or the use of math and spreadsheets, and disincentivizes future development.
Kari Chisolm, Swift Public Affairs partner, told Street Roots that Portland Metro Association of Realtors is concerned there could be collateral damage, and the ordinance should clearly distinguish between what information is considered public and what is private.
Chisholm said his client wants to ensure there are what he calls “safe harbors” for landlords who operate in the regular course of business, making sure the ordinance is very tightly focused on the problem of algorithmic price fixing and not other information landlords may share with accountants, banks or immediate family members of small real estate businesses.
“That’s our great concern,” Chisholm said. “This is going to put a chilling effect on housing. Landlords will panic and get out of the business of being landlords — and you can’t have tenants unless there are landlords.”
That notion may operate better as a fear tactic than a sound interpretation of the ordinance, Council Vice President Koyama Lane told Street Roots.
“That is something that specifically Council Morillo’s team has dug deeply into and has done extensive research on and has talked to other cities that have already done this same thing,” Koyama Lane said. “It seems like grasping for a talking point to try to scare people about this ordinance that really seems like a no-brainer, and from what I’m hearing from my constituents, is pretty popular.”
Brian Callaci, chief economist at the independent nonprofit organization Open Markets Institute, told Street Roots the conventional wisdom — which he called “heads in beds” — is for landlords to try to fill any vacancy.
“If you’ve got a building, you’re better off just filling as many of the vacancies as you can,” Callaci said.
He said the software goes against that, instead convincing landlords that they can make more profit by holding some units back and raising the rents.
And in a typical supply and demand market, rising rents would entice developers to invest.
“When there’s no collusion, when there’s no cartel, what rising rents tell developers is that there’s a scarcity,” Callaci said. “As more people bid for fewer and fewer apartments, that’s the mechanism by which rents will go up. And that signal is a bright light to developers — ‘Hey, there’s a shortage here, there’s scarcity; we need to go in and build.”
If the algorithm raises prices, it is not actually indicating scarcity, according to Callaci.
“No developer is going to enter a market where there is excess capacity, and excess capacity is exactly what raising prices through collusion creates,” Callaci said.
30-unit minimum
Despite the hand-wringing over the potential fallout for “mom-and-pop” landowners who operate only a few rental units, those plucky operations are not the intended customers for companies like RealPage.
Although the company does not disclose its pricing structure or other requirements publicly, a RealPage customer service representative told Street Roots landlords must have a minimum of 30 multi-family units to qualify for RealPage’s pricing software.
And in an email to Street Roots, RealPage representative Jennifer Bowcock said the company does not disclose its pricing structure.
“I can say it is priced per unit/month and not related to adoption or performance in any way,” Bowcock said.
Koyama Lane said the strong opposition from some lobbyists and interest groups may have more to do with the feeling of how power is changing in the new city government than the ordinance itself.
“It’s a piece of legislation that does put renters and the people at the center, and that might feel scary in connection to this adjusting to the changing demographic on council,” Koyama Lane said.
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This article appears in April 9, 2025.