East Portland tenants desperately trying to fight a looming 45 percent rent increase took a novel tack earlier this week: Shaming their landlord in his own neighborhood.
Members of the Ash Street Tenants Association and supportive renters’ rights advocates spent Tuesday peppering Raleigh Hills homes and telephone poles with flyers taking to task local resident Landon Marsh. Marsh’s company, Soaring Point Professional Offices, purchased an apartment building near SE 120th and Ash in June. The company immediately set about jacking up rents while tenants say the complex remained in disrepair—an act that for some has made Marsh a shining example of greed and opportunism in the city’s real estate market. Marsh did not immediately return a call for comment.
According to tenants, Marsh plans to charge $1,200 for a two-bedroom apartment at the complex, a $375 rent increase that many tenants say might as well be an eviction notice. But while their outcry has given the tenants more time to decide whether they’ll stay or go, it’s still moving ahead.
“We already live where people were told to go who can’t afford rent in Portland,” a tenant of the building said last week, testifying before Portland City Council, which was considering whether to extend the city’s housing “state of emergency.” “A choice between a $375 rent increase or eviction is an eviction from Portland.”
So tenants brought the fight to Southwest Portland this week. Portland Tenants United, a local advocacy group that’s been demanding stepped-up renter protections, helped the group distribute flyers to Marsh’s neighbors.
“Your neighbor Landon Marsh needs to hear from you,” it reads. “His actions are threatening to displace all of the families living in the apartment complex he recently purchased. All of us living in this complex face homelessness if Landon won’t help.”
Here’s a copy of the flyer.
PTU says the group delivered the flyers to roughly 40 homes near what the group says is Marsh’s home on Soutwest Laurel Leaf Terrace. They didn’t actually speak with any homeowners, according to PTU member Gabriel Erbs.
“We are very intentionally leaving that step as an escalation,” Erbs says. “If we have to knock on doors, we will. We want people to be aware of the slumlord.”
Asked whether he believed neighbors would actually put pressure on Marsh, Erbs conceded he couldn’t say.
“I would just point out that the lack of tenant protections on the books leaves us very little choice for how we can protect tenants,” he said.
That dearth of options has been at the heart of what PTU and other groups, like the Community Alliance of Tenants (CAT), have been railing against for the last year. CAT last year began calling for a housing state of emergency before Mayor Charlie Hales showed any inkling he wanted to invoke such a designation. But that state of emergency hasn’t gone the direction tenant advocates had envisioned. They wanted it to be used to spur a rent freeze and other protections in the city—and they’ve repeated the call for one frequently.
Pretty much any entity tracking rents nationwide concludes Portland has among the fastest-rising rents in the country. For instance, a recent survey from Realpage, a company that develops property management software, Portland saw an 8.8 percent rent increase for “new residents” between mid 2015 and mid 2016, second only to Sacramento.
PTU is planning another rally to push for rent protections on September 17.
These people got a great deal with below market rent for years, attacking the new owner personally for now charging a market rate on a property that he certainly paid for based on what market rate rents would be is inappropriate. It is great that the mercury redacted the phone number and address but they should have redacted his name as well.
econoline: “These people got a great deal”?
Wtf are you smoking? These people work every day to make the owners of a shithole rich. Something’s got to be done about the obscene rent gouging in this city, and apparently our Council can’t be bothered to do it.
PTU has the support of this entire community –minus the greedy landlords and their clueless apologists like yourself –to take a stand aghainst this immoral and community-destroying behavior.
They weren’t paying below market rents. The building didn’t even open until 2009. Most of the tenants have only lived there 3-4 years, all paying market rent for the area and the complex, all getting steady rent increases throughout their tenancy. Market rent has increased dramatically in the last year, and our growing lack of supply (hi AirBnB!) and that’s pushing all folks out to the margins where the formally pushed out have been safely hiding out, bracing for the next wave of gentrification. Which just crested. No one would have paid $1200 to live there even last year, and with three vacant units (two have been vacant for MONTHS) doesn’t look like any one is angling to pay it now. How much would you pay to watch for new hypodermic needles on your way out the door every morning?
Greed is evil.
Rationalize it however you like, newcomers. But this is as unethical as it is sickening. Greed has already ruined Portland, which until a few years ago was the only American city that valued people more than profits and decency over materialism.
In short, fuck this this landlord. He and his ilk (and enablers like Econoline) are among the worst people on earth.
The real question is: Is the landlord breaking the law?
Answer: No.
Trust me, I hate how Portland has changed and housing prices have gone through the roof, but I also don’t agree with this whole “public shaming” aspect of our society nowadays.
The city doesn’t care about rent increases… all they do is twiddle their thumbs while nothing gets done. When a property increases in value, the government gets more money in property taxes, so why in the hell would they try to stop it? That’s right: they wouldn’t.
Unfortunately, the landlord is doing what is well within their right to do. If there are no laws prohibiting such rent increases, then nothing can be done. Don’t like it? Change the laws.
Tough shit. Wake up to the news: Portland is no longer the cheap city where unambitious slackers can retire in place. Time to move. Astoria calls.
Tough shit. Wake up to the news: It’s a fascist country now. Shut up and move if you don’t like it, slacker.
– Italian from the 1930s.
@Douglas_Banter: Increases in property tax assessments are capped at 3% per year in Oregon. According to Zillow, Portland home values rose 20% last year. Somebody’s getting rich, but it’s not the City’s general fund.
@Euphonius: I concede to your counterpoint; I stand corrected.
So now this guys a total jerk for trying to maintain his investment AND have it return a profit? I’m pretty sure he bought this as an investment property. And I’m certain it needs various updates and repairs. It’s reported that he’s pricing the units at a comparable rent for the surrounding area. What’s the beef? If you can’t afford the new rent….move to a place that is within your budget! No one is forcing you to stay there! This talk of how “no one DESERVES to be bankrupted to live in their home” is the most absurd talk I’ve ever heard! What’s with this sense of entitlement that people have these days? Give me a huge break!!!
Congratulations Citizen X. You’ve joined the ranks of the morally bankrupt. Weeeeeee!