Precisely six months ago today, Portland City Council took what felt like a drastic step. On October 7, as outcry over rent increases and wide-spread evictions reached a boiling point among housing activists, the city formally declared a housing state of emergency.
Those same advocates now say the months that have followed haven’t offered enough progress. In a raucous and at times tearful demonstration in front of Multnomah County’s headquarters this morning, around 100 demonstrators made a fresh cry for a freeze on the city’s skyrocketing rents, and a moratorium on the no-cause evictions that have turned people out of some buildings en masse.
“We’re not alone and we’re not crazy,” said Margot Black, an assistant professor of math at Lewis and Clark College and leader of Portland Tenants United, which organized the demonstration. “We’re not losers just because we didn’t buy houses.”
The demand the crowd made this morning is a familiar one. Since at least last summer, groups like the Community Alliance of Tenants have argued the city’s housing shortage constitutes a “man-made disaster,” a designation that could allow the city or county to enact rent control despite a state preemption.
They point out services like Airbnb, which has replaced some permanent housing in the city with short-term rentals (and led to some dodgy situations).
“The fact is more and more people are being pushed out of the city and into the streets,” said Justin Norton-Kertson, an activist with Portland Tenants United.
The rental landscape has changed since the state of emergency was declared six months ago. While much of the effort surrounding that declaration has gone toward slashing the city’s homelessness problem, the city has also taken steps toward helping renters. Portland officials extended the notice landlords are required to give before raising rents by more than 5 percent or issuing a no-cause eviction.
Stronger provisions emerged on the state level during this year’s legislative session, when the General Assembly banned landlords from jacking up tenants’ rents during the first year of a month-to-month lease, and mandated three months’ notice for increases after that.
“Those aren’t actually protections,” Black said this morning. “They give you a little bit more time to deal with the trauma. They are snooze buttons.”
Here’s the thing about the demands activists are making: It’s not completely clear they’re viable. That is, even if Multnomah County agreed to stop rent increases and no-cause evictions on the basis of a man-made housing disaster, no one seems to know if it’d stand up to the inevitable legal challenge.
“It’s pretty undefined,” says Nick Caleb, a local housing activist and attorney. Caleb says the background of the state’s rent control preemption needs to be researched, to determine what precisely legislators meant by the disaster language.
As we’ve noted, the law applies to a disaster that “materially eliminates a significant portion of the rental housing supply.” Portland’s issues are largely based on failing to build housing, not eliminating existing housing.
UPDATE, 12:55 pm: Multnomah County spokesperson Dave Austin says the language of that law precludes county officials from enacting rent controls. He tells the Mercury change will have to come from Salem before the county can take stronger steps toward protecting tenants.
“The point they’re making that rents are skyrocketing, that the [economic] recovery isn’t for everyone—we 100 percent agree with that,” Austin says. But he adds: “There is nothing under current state statute that allows us to do what they’re asking. We can’t just say we’re gonna enact something and face legal action from a bunch of people.”
Original post:
This morning’s demonstration was sprinkled with a handful of candidates for office: Mayoral candidates Sarah Iannarone, Jessie Sponberg, David Schor, Bruce Broussard and Steven Entwisle were on hand (Jules Bailey was helping preside over a county commission meeting inside the building, and Sean Davis tells me he was there). So were was city council candidates Chloe Eudaly and Bruce Broussard.
I asked Iannarone if she thought the “man-made disaster” argument would fly. She didn’t know, but seemed interested in pursuing it.
“We play loose and fast with the rules all the time to achieve desired outcomes,” she said. “That’s what government does. We should avail ourselves of all possibilities.”
Housing, obviously, has been the central issue of the Portland political season, with practically every candidate offering ideas for easing the city’s brutal growing pains. Schor, who works at the Oregon Department of Justice, has suggested a tax on rich Portlanders to pay for affordable housing. State Treasurer Ted Wheeler has floated a tenant bill of rights.
Following the demonstration, activists filed into the county commission meeting to tell stories of unreasonable rent increases, and argue (and cheer and scream and curse) for their demands for more than an hour. Commissioners listened—sometimes nodding, mostly impassive—as the crowd seemed to grow angrier and angrier.
“I’m being brought to court for something I can’t fight,” said one woman, who described a no-cause eviction she was recently served with. It’s threatening to put her back on the street after she’d spent years homelessness. The woman powerfully talked of the joys of being able to be naked in her own home, after having “to be dressed 24/7 in case a cop pounds on your tent, if you can have a tent.”
“What do I do?” she asked. “What can you do to end this today? This madness needs to stop.”
“I don’t think I need to enumerate that this is a disaster,” Black said, pressing for action. “Clearly we are in a disaster clearly it is man made.” She went on to argue housing has been “materially eliminated,” as required by the preemption law, by steep rent increases and discriminatory housing practices.
“Declare a rent freeze today,” Black said. “Think about the legacy that you want to leave behind.”
It got to the point that audience shouting was more prevalent than testimony, and after nearly an hour and a half, County Chair Deborah Kafoury announced the board had to move onto other agenda item.
“They’re ain’t no fucking other agenda item today!” someone in the crowd yelled.
A few minutes later, Kafoury called a recess, and commissioners filed out to chants.
And now @dkafoury calls recess. It goes poorly. pic.twitter.com/iPjGeNe0zQ
— Dirk VanderHart (@dirquez) April 7, 2016
If nothing ultimately comes of the demonstration? “We start talking about a rent strike,” Black said.
“As we’ve noted, the law applies to a disaster that “materially eliminates a significant portion of the rental housing supply.” Portland’s issues are largely based on failing to build housing, not eliminating existing housing.”
That’s pretty disingenuous interpretation of what’s happened, Dirk. Landlords raise rents. They are not laws of nature like the tides. The affordable housing stock that WAS there now ISN’T. It has been torn down or landlords have you know made them not exist by making them not affordable. Portland’s landlords wouldn’t have to raise their rents 10-50% just because supply is tight, unless you take greed and exploitation as basic features of how housing markets are supposed to work. Either you did a shitty job listening or someone screwed up and didn’t tell you: this crisis is a man-made disaster. Landlords, developers, and real estate investment interests have made it.
Renter occupied housing units, per ACS (one year data)
2010 114,431
2011 122,773
2012 116,693
2013 118,706
2014 125,019
2015 data isn’t available, but realistically what’s it going to show? Is it going to show the number of rental units dramatically falling? If not, it’s tough to see how a significant portion of the rental housing supply has been eliminated.
I am also a city council candidate (position 1) and was also there. I’m the woman in the gray shirt holding the sign up in front of Jules Bailey in the video you posted.
Also, I saw Sean Davis and can confirm he was there. At a past mayoral forum, Sean talked about a pregnant woman who was squatting in a Hawthorne house that was demolished. She was there today – the woman who is eight months pregnant and testified about being in the Hawthorne house where another woman died. I met her afterward and have put the word out to her and other women who are pregnant/have babies and would otherwise be on the street that I have a safer place for them. We are challenging the ban against backyard camping in Portland. https://www.facebook.com/sara.long.09/vi…
ohh dear lord has the small town/ small minded attitude of Portland ever been so present. Look, wall street is not to blame for your problems – we are as we hold the vast majority of power yet operate horribly inefficiently thereby allowing opportunities to grow, opportunities they capitalize on (you’d do the same). In a similar fashion developers are just capitalizing on opportunities which you yourselves allow to grow in your own backyards. Stop crying to the government as it is their place to protect property ownership rights not to protect property owners from one another’s right- it is called capitalism and sorry but you must play the game. You cannot have the best of both worlds; you cannot ask for a gov. that protects your rights to property then ask them to restrict another’s just because they have more money than you. BUT you can ask the gov to roll up it’s sleeves and play the market rather than controlling it by placing something on the market which has the ability to drop rental prices in a natural fashion….hmmm what could that be??
CLUE: Obviously any other town who has gone through this has not found it otherwise their rents would not be double ours. Thus, we must think outside the tiny homes box.
Funny they point the finger and hold a sign, yet when you listen to what they are asking for you quickly realize they are not asking for anything new, thus they are irrationally entitled to think they’d observe any new results as compared to any town that has already been there done that. Everyone wants change yet no one wants to try anything new- irony.
As the saying goes; “if you don’t learn it the first time, you’ll learn it again”
Civil discourse has really devolved in Portland. Everyone thinks that their issue justifies a disruption at a meeting. People like Sarah Long think that, just because they can hold a pen long enough to fill out a form to run for office, that they can monopolize the spotlight. The problem with Long’s logic is that anyone should be able to disrupt anything. I hope that an anti-fluoride activist disrupts the next meeting on tenant’s rights so that Jesse Sponberg sees how lame the tactic is. Sarah Iannarone is truly making a fool of herself by indulging in tactics that undermine the office that she is seeking. She should imagine what it is like to be a mayor and try and get something done when attention-seeking nobodies interrupt the work session.
“Cities, counties and state agencies may impose temporary rent controls when a natural or man-made disaster that materially eliminates a significant portion of the rental housing supply occurs, but must remove the controls when the rental housing supply is restored to substantially normal levels.” – ORS § 91.225(5)
Any attempt at rent control like these protestors are asking for will completely fail to hold up to a legal challenge, and these politicians and protestors are either too stupid to realize it, or enjoy wasting the tax dollars that will be spent on the legal challenge that could otherwise go to something like, say, subsidizing lower income tenants.
As another poster above noted, the supply of housing units is actually increasing. And how do you define “substantially normal levels” per the statute? By the vacancy rate? The highest vacancy rate in the country (South Carolina at 10.5%) is less than 7 percentage points higher than Portland, which is the lowest in the country at 3.6%. You are within only a couple percentage points of the median, so that is “substantially normal” by any sane definition of the term.
The only “disaster” is that Portland became more popular nationally and internationally over the past decade, and there has been a resulting increase in competition for housing from people with more money than a lot of locals. This is not a “disaster,” this is pretty basic supply and demand at work.
None of this is to say I am not sympathetic to people who find themselves in dire circumstances due to lack of housing, but the solution should be to apply a general tax across the entire population to support city- or state-owned affordable housing, not to levy yet another tax on property owners only by forcing them to subsidize someone else’s living in their own private property at below-market cost. You don’t get to go on “mortgage strike.” You don’t get to freeze a mortgage.