Oregon’s top landlord advocacy group has issued a strong rebuke to a request made by Portland City Council Wednesday, which asked state and federal lawmakers to suspend rent and mortgage payments for individuals financially impacted by COVID-19.
“Please ignore the misguided and uninformed correspondence that you received yesterday from the City of Portland,” wrote Deborah Imse, director of Multifamily NW, in a letter sent to Gov. Kate Brown Thursday afternoon.
“It is critical that you understand that the City’s proposal is not only dangerous to our community in the near term,” she continued, “but that it would result in a cascading series of events threatening our basic economic structures.”
In the referenced correspondence sent to state and federal lawmakers Wednesday, Portland City Council asked for the government to forgive all residential and commercial rent and mortgage payments for the duration of the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Brown has already imposed a statewide moratorium on residential and commercial evictions due to non-payment of rent due to COVID-19—which comes with an expectation that the unpaid rent would eventually be paid back. The city council’s proposal goes further to ask that rent costs—and all mortgage payments—be entirely waived during the pandemic’s spread.
Without these kinds of protections, the city commissioners wrote, “We are putting tens of thousands of Portlanders who currently have housing at risk of becoming destitute or homeless as a result of this public health crisis.”
For Imse and other landlords represented by Multifamily NW, the idea of waiving rent and mortgage payments seems like a step towards economic disaster—rather than away from it.
In her letter, Imse explained how most mortgages for multi-unit apartment complexes are not financed through the Federal Housing Administration, which is offering mortgage repayment plans for its borrowers. Instead, Imse said, many complexes are financed through a smattering of different private and public funding sources, including private equity firms and Oregon’s public pension system. Canceling those payments could permanently impact the state’s economy, Imse wrote.
“Oregon government has neither the authority nor financial wherewithal to restructure or back these investments in the way that the city is proposing,” she wrote.
Imse predicts that if the state grants Portland’s request, it will initiate a “dire” domino effect among homeowners, renters, social services, and all taxpayer-funded programs. Instead, Imse pushed Brown to consider funding a rent voucher program for Oregon tenants, which would task the government with covering tenants’ unpaid rent during the crisis’ duration. Imse estimates the vouchers would cost the government about $350 million per month.
Neither Brown nor Portland City Council has responded to Imse’s letter—yet.
Ridiculously Greedy, everybody but landlords must suffer during this unprecedented time. The reason for the request is because all these people have lost income for no fault of their own. So what I hear from this landlord group is “We don’t care that you lost your income because of a massive pandemic when most of the rest of the economy has shut down, we aren’t going to loose our money because everybody was trying to keep others alive. We don’t care, make arrangements to pay us back or else face future ramifications. Oh of course we wont kick you out now, that would look bad, but if you don’t pay us back everything you owe us of course we will kick you out later when it won’t show up as bad press.” i see them saying this while they twirl their handlebar mustaches or rub their hands together while smiling greedily.
I cannot believe how shortsighted people are. Is there such a basic lack of knowledge of economics? Do people truly believe that rent/mortgage collections are somehow not connected to any greater impact? Do people really believe that landlords have no bills, mortgages of their own? Or that the mortgages the banks hold have no impact on liquidity in the market? You know what is worse than a pandemic? a complete economic depression aka 1929, on TOP of a pandemic.
So… rent forgiveness, in the form of the government negating the rent do in your contract is unconstitutional.
Under the contracts clause and the takings clause. Now if the government wants to pay your rent… that is different. And legally would amount to the same thing, though less expensive as the government wouldn’t have to pay legal fees and damages.
Story on this exact issue on the sister site The Stranger, from Seattle.
2018 Grad. U of O School of Law.
Housing is a horrible investment market, and always has been. Landlords know this. Banks know this.
Why is it OK to them for us to shut down other industries so people aren’t getting paid, but it’s not OK to shut down their industry so that they don’t get paid?
It’s a pandemic, you’re not going to get paid the rent you’re owes. Too bad. You’re not going to pay the banks and finance companies the mortgage they’re owed. Too bad.
You created this issue by turning housing into an investment instead of a right and now you can sit there and suffer with the rest of us as your non-essential industry of oppression shuts down.
Won’t somebody think of the poor poor landlords! What crock of shit.
Yes punish those that have to work even more. I guess 600 dollars a week isn’t enough for people.
Cry me a river.
Landlords represent one of the largest, most widespread and most pernicious wealth concentration systems in the US.
Ownership of rental properties is split between the landlord and financial instruments that benefit upper income individuals. Those individuals pay less income tax on the profits than regular wage owners pay on wages.
Those upper income investors and the landlords have liquid assets to survive on, and multi-property landlords can simply sell one of their many holdings, or condo convert one to stay afloat. Another option for landlords is to refinance the properties at rock bottom rates and take some cash out.
Publicly-held investment funds are diversified and should never be overly dependent on real estate. Those funds can make back any losses from rent forgiveness by investing in the return of the economy post Coronavirus.
@2: The severity of the economic consequences stemming from the wuhan flu (a colloquial name coined by the chinese, I do not use this term as a means to criticize China — a country that has handled the outbreak better than us — but rather it’s meant as a more humanizing term than “covid-19” to characterize this collective trauma… there was an excellent article in the Week magazine which put forth this point, and I thought it was cool) will be largely dependent on the length of time for which it goes on.
Evicting residents en masse before a vaccine is developed would almost certainly result in regional outbreaks which would unnecessarily cost additional lives. It is unlikely the financial protections for renters will extend a year or more, and it could take that long for it to be under control.
Besides the virus-related dangers of mass evictions, it’s a question of who stands to be more deeply hurt by this pandemic. My guess is that a loss of a home for thousands would be substantially more suffering on the balance than a few hundred landlords and affiliated owners in the housing market’s economic supply chain being forced to downsize or shutter.
It’s not that the landlords don’t have needs. Their needs are just less urgent than the needs of poor working class families who are unable to work at all due to circumstances beyond their control.
Let’s see if the city will wave the water and sewer charges. We’re all in this together eh?
@8:
It’s not influenza! Stop calling it the “flu”…even with another word in front of it, it’s still not a type of flu.
You & every one else calling it “the Wuhan flu” or “the Chinese flu” are idiots. It goes beyond any semblance of racism. The Spanish influenza (that did not originate in Spain) epidemic WAS actually a type of flu virus.
There’s nothing “more humanizing” about using the wrong virus name because you’re too stupid too understand the difference.
Not all viruses are “the flu”. A flu is a type of virus.
Influenza is a specific class of virus. Coronavirus is a completely different class of virus.
Just like a dog is a type of animal, but not all animals are dogs.
What you’re doing is like calling a cat a dog…because, you know, they both have 4 legs, a tail & fur, so they’re basically the same thing.
which do you think is easier to account for? Tens maybe hundreds of thousands of renters or a couple thousand landlords? what i am saying is that it is easier to have renters not pay and then offer assistance to a landlord and banks than all the paperwork and bureaucracy involved with handling this at the lowest levels.