Amid inflation and high rent costs, Senate Bill 611 seeks to strengthen rent control, tenants rights
President Lyndon Johnson said, "Education is the only valid passport from poverty," but 58 years later, Andrea Haverkamp said a lot of highly educated people live in cars while they wait for those passports to be stamped.
Haverkamp received her doctorate in environmental engineering with a minor in queer studies at Oregon State University two years ago.
"I slept in a van for five months because rent is out of control," she told members of the Senate Committee on Housing and Development on March 27.
Many of her fellow students — and even some faculty members — similarly find themselves priced out of traditional homes in Corvallis.
"We would compliment each other's set-ups or offer helpful advice on how we stay safe, dry or warm," she said. "This shouldn't be normal."
Haverkamp joined a packed hearing room of supporters and opponents of Senate Bill 611.
How the bill works
The bill seeks to strengthen rent controls enacted by the Legislature four years ago. The 2019 legislation capped annual rent increases at 7% per year — plus inflation.
However, unanticipated inflation rates enabled landlords to raise rents by at least 14.6% in 2023 under the 2019 legislation. Senate Bill 611 would limit annual rent increases to 5% plus inflation or 10% of the total rent, whichever is lower. The original version of the bill proposed a cap of 3% plus inflation or 8% of the total rent, whichever is lower.
It would also require landlords to cover three months' rent when tenants must move through no fault of their own. Currently, Oregon requires one month of rental assistance.
A week after the March 27 hearing, committee members held a work session where they voted 3-2 to send the bill to the floor of the Senate with a recommendation for its passage. Republicans Tim Knopp of Bend and Dick Anderson of Lincoln City voted against it.
'Living in a van looks glamorous on Instagram’
Although Portland draws much attention, Haverkamp told lawmakers during the hearing that Corvallis is truly Ground Zero for Oregon's rental crisis.
According to a report from Oregon Housing & Community Services last year, the college town of 60,000 is the state's most severely rent-burdened city. Approximately 37% of its renters spend more than half their monthly income on rent, the report said.
"People are losing sleep, sleeping in cars," Haverkamp told lawmakers. "These are not out-of-state investors. These are working Oregonians, students, members of the community and people you know."
She told Street Roots after the hearing that few in the OSU community are safe.
"I wish more people knew that there is a growing number of adjunct professors who are living without health insurance," she said. "When you're a Ph.D. student, and you have to come up with first, last and deposits, and you don't get paid until October, what are you supposed to do?"
Haverkamp told Street Roots she particularly wants people to know what's happening in academia because students and professors are not the traditional faces of poverty. They demonstrate the extent of the rental crisis, she said.
"Living in a van looks glamorous on Instagram," she said. "That's because a lot of us living in vehicles are trying to overcome the shame, freezing and cold, wet dark that comes with it. For every beautiful photo you see, there's a lot of hardship that goes with it."
'Like a private luxury and an investment opportunity’
While Senate Bill 611 seeks to firm up statewide rent control, House Bill 3503 wants to allow local governments to enact local laws to rein in rents. State Rep. Farrah Chaichi, D-Beaverton, is the bill's primary sponsor.
"House Bill 3503 is a straightforward bill that accomplishes one very simple and yet very impactful reform — removing the statewide prohibition on local governments implementing their own kind of rent control," Chaichi said during a public hearing on the legislation before the House Committee on Housing and Homelessness on March 30. "Every human being needs a place to live, just like we need water to drink. But our laws currently treat water like a public utility and housing like a private luxury and an investment opportunity."
Committee members voted 6-4 during an April 4 work session to refer the bill to the House Rules Committee without recommending its passage or rejection.
Republicans Jami Cate of Lebanon, Jeff Helfrich of Gresham, Cyrus Javadi of Tillamook and Boomer Wright of Coos Bay voted against the bill.
'Predatory pricing framed as what the market would bear’
Regardless of House Bill 3503's uncertain fate before the Rules Committee, Senate Bill 611 continues to draw the most support as well as the most fire. The battle lines are sharply drawn.
Many renters, such as Haverkamp, see landlords as predatory.
"What they're doing is holding on to thousands of empty units while profiting from people who are looking for shelter," she told Street Roots.
Misha Hernandez, representing the Oregon Nurses Association in Medford, said landlords take advantage of people left homeless by the wildfires in Southern Oregon.
"Immediately after the fires, the rents began spiking up all across Jackson County by hundreds of dollars — predatory pricing framed as what the market would bear," Hernandez told lawmakers.
Increased rents overwhelm the already beleaguered health care system, she added.
"People are choosing between rent and preventive care or medicine," Hernandez said.
'This will lead to higher rents on vacant units’
Meanwhile, landlords don't even call themselves landlords. They prefer to call themselves "housing providers" who would have a shot at providing enough housing to meet the state's demands were it not for regulations that threaten their incomes and stifle development.
"If I were to use a common phrase for what I feel is happening right now, it would be biting the hand that feeds you," Kennedy Amundson of Sheridan, who owns Propagate Property Management, told senators. "Oregon needs investors and landlords alike who not only have a desire to be here but to develop rental housing in Oregon.
"Continuing to house Oregonians at the sole expense of those providing their housing is not sound public policy and is not a sustainable way to address housing instability."
Legislators need to focus on encouraging housing development and assisting people so they can pay their rents, she added.
"You're fueling the exact fire you're trying to put out," she said.
Amundson said landlords are still reeling from Senate Bill 608, the 2019 legislation to make Oregon the first state to enact statewide rent control.
"It truly pushed landlords and investors into the realm of frustration," she said. "Senate Bill 611, however, will not just frustrate landlords and investors. It will literally make them take their money elsewhere."
Jason Miller, the legislative director for the Oregon Rental Housing Association, said landlords will sell their properties and reduce the rental stock if Senate Bill 611 passes. Developers won't build and won’t make improvements, he added.
"Inflation might have been at 7.6%," he told senators. "However, many of the costs of providing housing have increased two to three times that after the pandemic. If Senate Bill 611 becomes reality, housing providers will need to adapt their business to accommodate for out-of-control inflation. This will lead to higher rents on vacant units."
In voting no on Senate Bill 611, state Sen. Dick Anderson, R-Lincoln City, said the solution to the rental crisis is building more rental units.
"We're all very well aware of what we've been calling a housing crisis, and that has to do with a lack of production," Anderson said. "I don't see this bill helping that or assisting. As a matter of fact, I think it's a hindrance to additional production, especially in the rental arena."
'My rent is raised only for profit’
James VanCuren of Portland told lawmakers he can't wait for the state and developers to make good on Gov. Tina Kotek's goal to see 36,000 new housing units per year (up from about 22,000 created annually now).
He's on oxygen while he waits for a new lung.
"My rent was $550 at one point, and then they jumped it nearly $200 last year," VanCuren said. "This year, they jumped it to $903. That was way too high for me. That would take my whole Social Security check."
Landlords do not face hardships like those their tenants face, he added.
"My landlord is not in a financial crisis," he said. "His property is mostly paid off. My rent is raised only for profit. When you need to make three times the rent just to get into a unit, an increase in rent is a big deal when you're on a fixed income."
If rents keep going up, VanCuren told senators, the amount of new housing will be irrelevant.
"It won't matter if there is more housing if it's all empty because no one can afford to occupy it," he said.
Jessica Israel of Sherwood said she can't imagine how landlords think tenants like her and her husband have more money to spend on rent.
"We would never think that it was OK for someone to instantaneously lose 32% of their income, so how can it be allowed as a rent increase?" she said.
Israel said she doesn't believe landlords will be hurt by Senate Bill 611.
"This bill will not force landlords to leave," she said. "Nor will it stop developers from building in Oregon. What it will do is create a standard that separates the wheat from the chaff and bring in landlords and developers who care about Oregonians and want to invest in our communities, not siphon from them."
'People like me are going to be the new face of homelessness’
Kathryn Chambers of Salem, like VanCuren, said she can't wait for developers to work any kind of free-market magic. At 67, she lives on a fixed income and cannot absorb another rent increase, she told committee members.
"Sometime in the next year, you may see me on your drive into Salem standing on the street corner or living in a tent because I am not joking when I say that people like me are going to be the new face of homelessness in Oregon," Chambers said. "I wake up every day and go to sleep every night, worrying about keeping a roof over my head.
"I live with the constant stress of knowing that if my landlord raises my rent by the allowable 14.6%, I will be priced out of my home."
Chambers told lawmakers her income is just high enough to push her past the threshold of any assistance but low enough to put her housing in jeopardy.
"I'm not alone," she added. "Senior citizens on a fixed income who have seen their rents increase by hundreds of dollars a month are facing choices between housing and food, medical treatment and having to surrender their beloved companion pets."
'Rent spikes are directly leading to eviction cases’
Oregon renters were protected from evictions for nonpayment of rent during the pandemic, but those protections expired last October.
"Since October, we've had more than 2,000 eviction filings per month," Sybil Hebb, director of Legislative Advocacy at the Oregon Law Center, said. "That has seen no signs of abating.
"We are seeing that, on average, about 86% of those filings are for nonpayment.Rent spikes are directly leading to eviction cases. The majority of them are nonpayment cases."
Evictions disproportionately affect people of color, she added. In Oregon, Black women face eviction at more than twice the rate of white renters, she said.
Israel said she and her husband received a 32% increase, while their neighbors received 15% increases.
"We are the only Black Hispanic Jews in our entire complex," she said. "It is clear that this 32% rent increase for us is both predatory and discriminatory."
'I have seen family after family fall just a few hundred dollars short’
State Sen. Wlnsvey Campos, D-Beaverton, is one of the chief sponsors of Senate Bill 611 and previously worked as a caseworker for Family Promise of Beaverton, a homeless shelter in Washington County.
"I have been witness to hundreds of stories of homelessness and housing insecurity in Oregon," she said during the public hearing. "I have seen family after family fall just a few hundred dollars short of paying their rent and end up on the streets or in their car."
Campos said their stories are heartbreaking.
"I have seen small children run up to their parents when they have seen the parents crying and hug them because the parent has felt frustrated because things were out of their control," she said.
The issue is even personal for her, she told her colleagues. A few years ago, she received a rent increase. Her budget was already tight.
"To afford the rent increase, I lost health care," she said. "I felt lucky that I had that piece in my budget to cut, but a lot of folks don't even have that health care to be able to cut out of their budget.
"Housing affordability is an essential part of addressing homelessness. We cannot seriously say that we want to address houselessness without doing everything that we can to make sure that people are maintaining their current housing. If we don't address this, we're only dealing with the revolving door of homelessness and instability for Oregonians."
'Where we live is not just a unit in a company's portfolio’
Jason Miller of Portland, a decidedly different Jason Miller than the one who spoke on behalf of the Oregon Rental Housing Association, said he wearies of landlords’ arguments.
"It should be illegal to support a certain standard of living just because people own property, and it is most certainly unfair and immoral that the working class should teeter on the brink of homelessness just because the free market and late-stage capitalism deem it so," Miller said during the public hearing on House Bill 3503. "I'm tired of old white men and lobbyists running our country."
Israel, in the hearing on Senate Bill 611, said society must quit looking at housing as a consumer product.
"Where we live is not just a unit in a company's portfolio," she said. "It is our home."
Regardless of how they look at bills affecting rent and housing, Chambers said, lawmakers will eventually have to look at people like her as they lose their homes and live on the street.
"I am simply an example of what is about to happen across the state," she said.
Editor’s note: Sybil Hebb, a source quoted in this story, is a member of the Street Roots board of directors. Street Roots board members are not financially compensated and are not involved in the editorial process.
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