As local landlords mount a renewed legal challenge to the relocation payments Portland’s requiring of landlords these days, the city’s getting ready to extend the law’s life-span.
As soon as next month, the Portland Housing Bureau plans to put legislation before Portland City Council that keeps the current law alive for six months past its current scheduled sunset in October. According to PHB Policy and Equity Manager Matthew Tschabold, that extension will create breathing room as the city works toward a permanent policy—which will be up for consideration before the six months is up.
“This extension is to provide space,” Tschabold told a technical advisory committee that’s making recommendations on the renter relocation law, in a meeting last Friday. “We won’t be waiting six months before legislation is brought to council.”
The move means that tenants who are issued no-cause evictions, or who move out when their rent is hiked by 10 percent or more, can continue to expect payments of between $2,900 and $4,500 well into next year. Two Portland landlords, Phillip Owen and Michael Feves, have challenged that law in court, arguing it amounts to illegal rent control, among other things.
The pair, backed by the local landlord lobby and represented by attorney John DiLorenzo, suffered a defeat at the circuit court level, when a state tax judge ruled Portland’s law passes muster. After initially saying they’d hold off on an appeal, though, the attorneys challenged the ruling last week.
“We still strongly believe the ordinance will only aggravate Portland’s housing crisis,” DiLorenzo said in a statement announcing the appeal. “The court failed to see it for what it is – disguised rent control, which violates state statutes and the Oregon Constitution.”
In response, Commissioner Chloe Eudaly, who introduced the relocation payment ordinance, issued her own statement: “The ruling from Judge [Henry] Breithaupt was clear and comprehensive. It is disappointing that DiLorenzo and the landlord lobby continue to waste time and money fighting the city in its efforts to stabilize families in their homes. Their time might be better spent helping us find additional solutions to the housing crisis instead of trying to take away the only tool we have to help vulnerable people.”
There’s no telling how long it will take for an appeal to play out, but it’s likely that by the time a ruling is issued, Portland’s policy will have changed. At last week’s meeting, Tschabold presented a lengthy list of potential changes to the law that the PHB is considering introducing into a permanent ordinance.
Changes the bureau appeared to be favoring (though that was subject to change), included offering relocation assistance only to tenants with rents below a certain monthly threshold, changes to how information about the law is disseminated to the public, and exemptions regulated affordable housing providers in some scenarios.
I would just like to say that I think the city needs to do something to help out small time landlords with the ramifications of this law. My parents own a couple of rentals and one of their tenants has moved in a boyfriend who is a felon in violation of the lease and they have been fighting to the point that it brought complaints from neighbors. My parents told them he has to go and they are lying and saying he is out but it is pretty clear he has not moved. I am not pleased that rather than just using the no cause eviction law my parents now have to play magnum p.i. to prove that she is violating the lease so that they can evict them. What if this felon decides to violently confront them? Also I hope that the courts have staffed up as not having the option to use no-cause to evict problem tenants won’t result in fewer evictions of problem tenants but it will mean a lot more of them will have to go before a judge.
LOL, what a surprise. Who could have predicted this “crisis” would be extended indefinitely, even though we have seen average rents flatten out in price as more supply comes online.
And yes, econoline, your parents’ predicament is exactly what we all predicted with the elimination of no-cause evictions, an essential tool for small time landlords who don’t have the deep pockets of large buildings and management companies to deal with problem tenants who cause harm to the property and neighbors without rising to the level of an evictable offense (assuming you even have the time and resources to collect evidence sufficient enough to hold up in court with a very expensive proceeding).
Also, if Chloe Eudaly thinks that ordinance is the “only tool they have available” to help with the housing situation, she’s an even bigger moron than I thought. Read literally any economics or urban planning study – you build more to bring prices down. It is a consensus equal to that of scientists on climate change.