The Oregon Legislature is already moving on renter protections. That’s a good sign.
On Feb. 4, the Senate Housing Committee, chaired by Sen. Shemia Fagan (D-Clackamas), will look at Senate Bill 608, co-sponsored by House Speaker Tina Kotek, Senate President Peter Courtney, Sen. Ginny Burdick and Sen. Laurie Monnes Anderson. The bill prohibits no-cause evictions after a year of occupancy and regulates rent increases at no more than 7 percent plus consumer price index – so about 10 percent after inflation is factored in.
The two issues – no-cause evictions and the rent caps – are a necessary package. They have to go hand-in-hand so that landlords don’t evict tenants in order to circumvent rent regulations – at least not after they’ve lived in an apartment for a year.
On one hand, this is a big step forward on the housing crisis. It would be the first statewide rent stabilization in the nation – as it should be. Our housing crisis isn’t confined to the neighborhoods we walk through every day. It is statewide, and it’s important that eviction protections and renter relocation fees are gains felt by all Oregonians. The statewide measure doesn’t remove the more progressive gains around relocation fees that Portland has already made, but it does bring more of this to other areas of the state.
Because while some of the dynamics to the housing shortage might be particular to a city or region, the root causes are generally the same. The profit motive has been allowed to triumph over the fact that housing is a fundamental human need to survive. For too many decades, the marketplace has been allowed to skew sharply toward money over humanity, and Oregon is just too attractive of a market to pass up.
It’s time for the pendulum to swing the other way.
This stabilization measure blocks the overwhelming rent increases – 50 percent to 100 percent in some cases – that can throw a person into turmoil. Because so much about landlords is not regulated – there isn’t even a database of landlords in the state – there’s scant data on the frequency of these spikes. But they do happen, and they are devastating families and neighborhoods.
It’s a foundational gain to protect people from the most egregious surges in their rents. The bill also brings some additional protections to renters in areas of the state where they have none.
While the bill creates new landlord-based business reasons for ending tenancy, landlords who use those exceptions to evict tenants must provide 90 days’ notice, as well as one month’s rent as relocation fees, if the landlord owns five or more units.
Furthermore, new construction is exempt for a period of 15 years after certificate of occupancy.
On the other hand, there’s so much more to do after this passes. Crucially omitted is a lift on the statewide ban on rent stabilization imposed on local governments. In 1985, the Legislature passed a pre-emption that prohibited local governments from enacting rent control measures, and Street Roots maintains that this ban must be lifted. We have always pushed for local municipalities to have all the tools at their disposal to take care of their residents.
And there is a slew of other renter protections that we need for people to have stable and affordable places to live. We must keep fighting for all kinds of renter support, including rental assistance to avoid homelessness, legal assistance for resolving disputes, improving rental conditions, enforcing fair housing regulations, eliminating application fees, and much more.
Don’t be swayed by claims that this kind of rent stabilization is a radical measure. It’s not. This is not rent control of yesteryear. Rent stabilization elsewhere in the country comes in at much lower percentages. Take Berkeley, where a different calculation regulates rent increases to no more than 3 or so percent. In New York, it’s approximately 1.5 percent.
This proposal allows for a highly reasonable (some housing advocates might say excessively generous) 7 percent annual increase, plus consumer price index.
The marketplace needs this.
To put this in perspective, the “Homelessness in the Portland Region” report that ECONorthwest prepared this past fall for the Oregon Community Foundation argues that increases in rent correlate with increases in homelessness: “High rents are to blame for the severity of Portland’s homelessness crisis.” Drawing from the work of economists John Quigley and Steven Raphael, the report predicts that an average of 10 percent increase in rent – about what this stabilization will be set at right now – correlates to more than 13 percent rise in homelessness. So we’re on a backward-moving train.
Anyone who thinks the Legislature should remain hands-off in this crisis is burying their head in the sand. These statewide proposals, while a solid first step, still do not stem the tide of our housing shortage and rising homelessness. It is truly the least we can do.
The Legislature needs to get this passed so we have a better baseline, but we expect them to keep fighting. We will too.
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