It’s been a matter of heated debate ever since Portland passed a law requiring relocation payments to renters nearly a year ago: Should “mom-and-pop” landlords who only manage one rental unit be exempt from the law?
So far, the Portland City Council has said “yes.” The single-unit exemption was passed as part of the initial law in February 2017, and survived a round of tweaks the council made to the law last summer.
Now, renters advocates are making their strongest play yet to get the exemption taken off the books. An analysis being shared by the tenant activist group Portland Tenants United and city council candidate Jo Ann Hardesty purports to give the most comprehensive look to-date at how many units are actually exempt under the loophole—and it’s a lot.
According to the new report, fleshed out over the course of three months by a Portland researcher named Meg Hanson, the city contains more than 24,000 units exempt from the renter relocation laws because they are their owners’ sole rental property. That accounts for more than 16 percent of the city’s total rental units, the report suggests, with more than half the single-family homes and condos up for rent citywide subject to the exemption.
“There’s been this big piece of data that’s been missing from this very important conversation about policy,” Hanson tells the Mercury. “This is a huge gap and something that was really important.”
The city’s mandatory renter relocation policy requires landlords to pay between $2,900 and $4,500 to renters when they either issue a no-cause eviction or cause a tenant to move by raising the rent by at least 10 percent. It’s not popular with folks who rent property.
But while the region’s landlord lobby has attempted to fight the relocation policy in court (so far unsuccessfully), hearings on the matter have been disproportionately attended by small-time landlords who argue the requirements are too onerous for a “mom-and-pop” outfit. Those pleas have held weight in City Hall, as have the contention of realtors who say the law is convincing small landlords to sell their properties.
Hanson says her study—conducted voluntarily in her free time—was aimed at adding a semblance of data to the discussion.
To arrive at her conclusions, Hanson says she scraped tax data from the Multnomah County Assessor’s website. By drilling down, she says she was able to identify with reasonable certainty which properties were not occupied by their owners. She deemed those rental properties, then set about analyzing that data to find which owners only appear to own one rental unit.
“This is a blunt instrument,” Hanson concedes. “This study is not intended to split hairs.”
Instead, she believes the analysis offers an idea of how much of the rental market is currently exempt from relocation payments. She believes the loophole has created a rental market where tens of thousands of tenants aren’t being afforded protections that city leaders have said are necessary for others. Hanson is a renter herself, she notes, and has been friendly with Portland Tenants United, though she characterizes her work as an “independent study.”
Earlier this week, Hanson says she met with officials from the Portland Housing Bureau (PHB) to go over her findings. According to her characterization, city officials did not take much exception to the study, though they cautioned that vacant units are not allowed for. We’ve reached out to the Housing Bureau for comment, but have yet to hear back.
In the meantime, the data will be fresh ammo in the most intense argument currently existing around the renter relocation law. At some point in coming months, Portland City Council plans to take up an ordinance making the law permanent—but exactly when isn’t clear. Hearings have been repeatedly pushed back as a “technical advisory committee” made up of varying factions debates what a permanent policy should look like.
That debate extends to city council as well. Mayor Ted Wheeler has so far opposed doing away with the single-unit exemption, while Commissioner Chloe Eudaly has supported the move.
Now, more voices are piling on. This afternoon, Hardesty has called a press conference with representatives of PTU and the Community Alliance of Tenants to trumpet the findings in the new report. According to a press release sent out yesterday, Hardesty will also call into question Wheeler’s decision to delay a meeting of the city’s technical advisory committee, which had been scheduled for this afternoon.
Michael Cox, Wheeler’s deputy chief of staff, said today that delay was due to scheduling issues, though he couldn’t offer specifics. And he made clear that Wheeler’s position hasn’t changed.
“The mayor has seen the report that’s referenced,” Cox said. “The truth of the matter is that we do not have the kind of quality data we want.” While he noted that he wasn’t disputing the report’s findings, Cox says the only way to know the truth is to require landlords to register their rental properties with the city—a campaign pledge of Wheeler’s that is still in the works.
“Nobody’s trying to refute this data,” Cox said. “Certainly rental registration would have the kind of quality first-order data that we’re looking for.”
Update, 2:47 pm: Wheeler’s office has issued a statement addressing the rescheduling of today’s meeting, and the mayor’s feelings on the single-unit exemption.
“Assumptions don’t necessarily make good policy,” Wheeler writes in the memo, addressed to members of the technical advisory committee. “Rather good data help to inform the creation of good policy. Consequently, I have instructed PHB to refrain from amending the one-unit exemption at this time.”
Wheeler goes onto say he favors the creation of a registry system which would make better data available.
The mayor’s instructions to the housing bureau certainly hold sway, but they aren’t necessarily the final say. When council ultimately takes up the renter relocation payments again, a vote of three city commissioners would be enough to do away with the exemption. It’s not clear such a voting bloc exists.
Here’s Wheeler’s full letter.
oh brother where to start with that “report”. Piece of qualitative and quantitative statistical analysis crap might be an accurate assessment. And no wonder Wheeler put the kabosh on it. 24,000 units? No statistical variance error was put into that “Methodology” to determine rates of inaccuracy in the data set at +/- percentage. No other data was used to crosscheck. The data itself tells us little about important related findings including but not limited to: what are the rent levels of those units compared to market rates? What are the income levels of tenants? what have been the rental increases in those units, historically? What is the turnover rate of these units? How many are vacant? What are the owners’ incomes, how many are owned by low income owners, limited income elderly or disabled? How many units are being rented to low income relatives? How many of the homes are owned by persons of color, given wealth creation, gentrification, and racial economic equity is a huge problem in Portland for POC. Now take these variables and compare them to non-exempt units. And then we really need to look at what has occurred to non-exempt units since the ordinance took place: how many people have been given no cause evictions and relo fee? What were their income levels? Where did they end up and how much are they now paying? How many units have received for cause evictions in the past 12 months, are fir cause evictions, especially court evictions increasing, decreasing, staying the same? Etc etc etc
Even some, gosh even any, even something at least could give a data driven, rational housing planning best practice approach to provide an accurate picture, and better (or some) argument, for expanding the relo ordinance.
Instead we have what is known in planning as a hollow “and so what” report. It’s weak, it tells us little, it makes no solid argument but can be used just as well to make a strong against argument: expanding the relo ordinance would cause small, local landlords to sell to flippers, tear down developers, and higher income home buyers taking valuable existing rental housing off the rental market, especially needed family sized homes and disrupting communities of color further as they can’t find affordable replacement reveal housing in the same area.
Really, truly, that report is so bad it would fail the housing 101 policy class at PSU.
And Wheeler saw right through it and rightfully (with his degrees in economics and public policy, and MBA) called stats & policy report BS. That report tells us absolutely nothing we need to know to make good policy decisions.
Gong! Try again PTU and aeudsly’s dumbo “policy expert”‘Jamey Duhsmel. You morons failed and blew a great opportunity to help renters. Yet again.
Mom and pop would be me. I rent out my home In order to keep my home. Divorce and unemployment means I wouldn’t be able to pay the mortgage without help right now. I rent a one-bedroom apartment in the meantime. It’s weird that if you rent a property it somehow makes you “rich”. My renters make more than I do.
Well sone data is better than none, but yeah that data really doesn’t make any kind of data driven argument to expand the relo ordinance. As pointed out there’s been no data driven analysis to show the relo ordinance is even helping renters and affordability overall, or if it’s harming renters and affordability more.
I too curious as to how many African Americans own these properties, what the rent levels are already, and who is in these units. If adding a relo ordinance to these homes and it causes even 1000, or 100 low income African American households to be displaced because the owners decide to sell due to having additional regulations & costs imposed on them by the city, that would be a big policy problem indeed.
Eudaly and Co should have implemented data gathering at the start of the relo ordinance last year by doing door and mail surveys and tracking renters and rental units the best they could rather than relying on a pretty but shallow & useless report done by some citizen who works not in housing or urban planning but in tech, who doesn’t even seem to understand housing data analysis or public policy.
Eudaly has a dedicated policy “expert” person on staff and they’ve had a year to get some good data, they really blew an opportunity here.
I moved out of state for a year about 9 years ago. I kept my house because I knew there was a strong chance that I would be coming back and rented it below market rent to some friends because they knew that if I returned they would have to move. I would have just left it vacant had the rules prevented me from moving back in when I returned. At the absolute least the rules around rental units should allow a person who is moving out of town for a short period of time to sign a lease with someone for only that period and to move back into their home after that without penalty. It may not be a huge slice of the market but it would be stupid in this time of a housing emergency to discourage homeowners from renting their homes out if a job or need for training require them to move for a period of 1-2 years.
My last tenant is a mid-level Nike exec, made about $400k/yr. I certainly don’t make that, and he certainly didn’t need the relo payment, even though I would have owed him one if I wanted to move my mother into the property.
Also, why is PTU even at the table anymore? Hasn’t Dirk or anyone here been paying attention to the massive racism problem their key leadership has? It isn’t enough that Margot Black “resigned” (she’s still calling the shots behind the scenes with her equally racist husband Sammy Black). Nobody should listen to their bullshit claims, or implement their bullshit policies. The current relo ordinance is bad enough.
Wheeler is well within his rights, and absolutely correct, to demand a hell of a lot more data before ramming through any additional policies on this front.
Also, Jamey Duhamel is no “policy expert,” she’s a moron and a fraud. Her own bio states that she moved her family to Portland to “take advantages of the services,” i.e., to mooch off of Portland taxpayers, and then was “surprised” about the high cost of housing, as if she hadn’t done any fucking research whatsoever. She also lies on her bio about her years of experience, if you check her LinkedIn, graduation date, and prior positions relative to her claims about how much experience she has. So a big, lying, no-nothing grifter. It’s almost like Chloe Eudaly hired a clone of herself. No wonder the state of housing hasn’t gotten any better, with all of three brain cells running the policy side of the Eudaly commissioner seat.
Do we even know if the relocation ordinance is working, or is it making it harder and more unaffordable for renters overall? This report nor any report, and no journalism has ever answered that big important question.
One common theme with Eudaly and PTU seems to be making policy decisions based on wishful thinking, anecdote and emotion. No wonder Wheeler gave them all the adult no-no.
Pretty sure Eudaly & PTU don’t want actual solid data and analysis though because it may very well not tell them what they want to hear nor fit their agenda.
@Mary I am curious if what the ordinance isn’t really doing is causing a lot more people to use for cause evictions to get people out. You are supposed to give someone the 4500 before they move, but there is no guarantee they will get out, you might hand over the 4500 dollars and then still have to go through an eviction process and be unable to recover your money. I can’t see many landlords being excited about that so in cases where there was cause for an eviction in the past I think a lot of people would have gotten 60 day notices to move, but now they will get notices of eviction with shorter timelines, having to go to court, and the possibility of ending up with an eviction on their record. Overall I am not sure this is a better solution for anyone.
@econoline – some simple research by our buddy Dirk would clear up the for-cause eviction thing. Just do a records request and figure out if the number of for-cause evictions has increased following passage of the ordinance. Or Eudaly or PTU could have provided us this info. The fact that they aren’t is…pretty telling, I would say.
There’s already another Merc article where Eudaly basically admits that the passage of the ordinance has resulted in a swath of 9.99% rent increases that would not otherwise have happened because landlords feared even more draconian measures coming down the pipeline, a reaction that is a surprise to literally nobody with more than five brain cells to work with.
@housingmuddle i’m curious why the mayor has had a year to oppose this provision but has offered no data of his own, eh? I mean, he’s head of Housing bureau after all.
@mary hi hi. Are you a renter? It’s hell out here
@flaviosuave you’ll be happy to know the current policy allows an exemption for landlords moving family members back into a residence such as your mother.
@DJT the ordinance wasn’t written for folks like you, right? This was to stem the no-cause evictions taking place by predatory Landlords who merely wanted poor tenants out to make room for more monied tenants.
@econonline- hi hi, perhaps you are unaware of sabbatical or fix term leases? ORS 90 allows for leases of a fixed term that do not no rollover to month-to-month with both parties agreeing to those terms.