As Oregon continues to grapple with an affordable housing shortage, the Oregon Senate appears ready to kill renters’ best hope for new protections in this year’s legislative session.
Over the weekend, speculation began spreading online that Democratic senators didn’t have the support to pass House Bill 2004. With the clock running out on this year’s legislative session, it looks like the legislation will die in committee.
“I can confirm that there is not a path forward for House Bill 2004,” says Rick Osborn, a spokesman for Senate Democratic leadership.
The development isn’t altogether surprising. We reported last month that the Senate was working to reshape the bill in order to win the support of Portland Senator Rod Monroe and others.
As passed by the House in a narrow vote, the bill would have allowed cities and counties in Oregon to establish rent control policies for the first time in more than three decades, limited landlords’ ability to issue no-cause evictions, and more. The rent control provision was stripped out as part of a set of amendments in a Senate committee, as Democrats tried to win over skeptical members of their party (Republicans had vowed to oppose the bill).
Those tweaks angered the group Portland Tenants United, which decided not to support HB 2004 as a result. But they also weren’t enough to appease skeptical lawmakers. Senate Majority Leader Ginny Burdick told the Mercury last month senators were working on amendments that could satisfy the concerns of Monroe—who owns a large East Portland apartment building—Senator Betsy Johnson, and others. And in fact lawmakers did adopt some changes during a work session in the Senate’s Rules Committee a week ago.
They apparently had little effect. And with Senate President Peter Courtney loath to call a bill up for a vote that has little chance at passage, it appears renter protections will join serious tax reform and a whole host of other goals for this year’s legislative session on the cutting room floor.
Supporters of HB 2004 aren’t yet giving in completely. A coalition called Stable Homes for Oregon Families is organizing events in Medford, Eugene, and Portland today, featuring local elected officials. Portland’s event is scheduled for 3 pm at City Hall, and will include City Commissioner Chloe Eudaly and Milwaukie Mayor Mark Gamba speaking out in favor of the bill.
Good. This entire bill was ill-conceived, and would do lasting harm to the Portland housing situation, only benefiting incumbent renters at the expense of everyone else. Look at Santa Monica, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York if you want to see the long-term effects of these exact same rent control measures on housing prices.
Also, guess what? Rents have just about flattened out year-over-year this past year thanks to all of the new supply finally coming online. It’s a pretty simple and straightforward issue – increase the housing supply and it puts downward pressure on prices. You don’t have to involve the full Oregon legislature or amend state law to change the zoning in Portland to bring more housing supply online.
FlavioSauve, my 75 year old father has lived in his Santa Monica apartment for 30 years, and would have been displaced long ago without rent stabilization, as would all other working class and elderly renters. I was also able to stay in my neighborhood in Los Angeles for a decade thanks to rent control, as were the Latino families in my building, even after the neighborhood became ridiculously gentrified. There are tens of thousands more stories like ours.
Housing prices are high because the areas are desirable and land is finite, not because of rent control. As for the “trickle down” theory, I watched many higher end apartments sit almost empty in Los Angeles while the formerly affordable housing stock was snapped up and priced well beyond the means of the working class.
Your 75 year old father drove up rents for everyone around him. As did you and those Latino families (and what does their race have to do with anything?). How many other folks with jobs in Santa Monica or your other neighborhood have to live farther out, spending time and money commuting and imposing traffic costs on everyone else, because you enjoyed the subsidized benefit of rent control? Totally selfish, universally agreed among housing policy experts and economists as bad policy, and we’re going to see the same bad effects in Portland as every other city in which it has been tried. It’s a selfish grab by incumbent tenants at the expense of everyone else trying to compete for housing.
When FlauviSauve posts about “these exact same rent control measures,” he is lying. In any of its forms, HB 2004 does not enact rent control anywhere in the state of Oregon.
LOL, albert, you disingenuous turd. Every rent control measure being proposed by Eudaly, Margot Black, and PTU is exactly the same as in those cities. HB 2004 itself doesn’t enact those measures, but it clears the way. Do you honestly think nobody knows how legislation works?