We’re in a housing crisis. We need to lift the pre-emption on rent control.
We cannot build our way out of our housing crisis. The free market will always cleave to profits as high as the market can bear. And in a city as desirable as Portland, regardless of periodic lulls, the market ratchets upward with each season.
We need statewide action – forged from honest debates about what our housing market needs to restore some balance. It’s going to require a new way of thinking about how to rein in a runaway market, create logical protections for people who need affordable housing, and support the landlords we rely on to keep roofs over our head.
We’ve been kicking the can down the road for far too long. It’s time for a productive discussion on rent stabilization. Former Rep. Shemia Fagan (D-Clackamas) will be the head of the Senate Housing Committee and has supported lifting the pre-emption on rent control.
Oregon let go of the reins on runaway rents in 1985, when the Legislature passed a pre-emption that prohibited local governments from enacting rent control measures.
One of the strongest proponents of the pre-emption was former Portland Mayor Charlie Hales. More than three decades later, he declared a housing crisis in the city of Portland, and he has since told Portland Monthly magazine that he believes the state pre-emption should be lifted.
A lot has changed in those three decades. Rents have increased in Portland far faster than income levels, and apartments affordable to low-income, by federal standards, are increasingly rare in most neighborhoods. In the case of extreme-low-income households, virtually nonexistent.
We have a marketplace that accepts this disparity – that there is no place in our city the extremely poor can live affordably, meaning they would not have sufficient funds after rent to buy food and clothing, or to pay for insurance, transportation and health care.
That’s not OK.
In the larger picture, the overall market has created a bottleneck of once-first-time homeowners staying in rental properties longer because of red-hot pricing in the housing market.
The median sales price citywide rose from $257,487 in 2011 to $406,192 in 2017, an increase of 58 percent, or over $148,000, according to the Portland Housing Bureau’s 2018 State of Housing report. One of the city’s most affordable neighborhoods, Lents-Foster, witnessed the most significant increase in median home sales price, which grew nearly 113 percent between 2011 and 2017. Sixteen neighborhoods saw increases greater than 50 percent in median home sales price.
“Increases in home prices and rents in many East Portland neighborhoods continue to raise serious concerns over potential involuntary economic displacement, as well as housing access and stability,” the report’s authors state.
Indeed, since 2011, incomes have risen overall, but the median income levels increased only among white households, and actually decreased among African-American, Hawaiian-Pacific Islander, and Native American populations, according to the Portland Housing Bureau.
It’s been well documented in our pages and in other media and agency reports that our state must change its approach to how we house people, particularly people who are on fixed incomes like the disabled and the elderly, single parents with children, and parents of disabled children. Rising rents are directly linked to economic insecurity, displacement and homelessness. And consider this: There are 22,000 homeless students across this state – 22,000.
This is a statewide problem. It is not an anomaly. This is a terrible, destructive trend, and we must intervene.
Proposals are now being crafted in anticipation of the 2019 legislative session, and already the landlord lobby is crying rent control, waving the specter of defeat before real discussions have even begun. This approach will get us nowhere.
Rent stabilization is not a panacea on our housing crisis, but neither is it the ham-fisted rules of yesteryear. It is a flexible tool that cities can work with to help preserve their communities for future generations.
There is flexibility in how stabilization efforts treat small, mom-and-pop landlords compared to the major institutional investors – corporations that are consuming more and more of both our rental and single-family housing stock. There is flexibility in creating measured rent increases, sustainable for both landlord and tenant. There is flexibility to still incentivize new construction and investment in rental properties, and even more flexibility for each local community to decide its own priorities.
We trust lawmakers in Salem will listen to the facts and options on what rent stabilization can mean for Oregonians. We look forward to the lively discussions.
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