Mayor Ted Wheeler made it official on February 9. Appearing before an advisory committee that’s been studying fixes to Portland’s law requiring relocation payments to renters, Wheeler announced he’d support closing a controversial loophole in the policy.
Now, members of a separate but similar committee are quitting in protest. Since Wheeler’s announcement that he’ll be a crucial vote in making sure landlords who rent only a single unit are required to pay relocation fees, two men have resigned from the new Rental Services Commission (RSC), a board meant to make recommendations on city policies around rentals.
Shortly after Wheeler’s announcement, RSC member Ron Garcia was the first to defect. A property manager and president of Rental Housing Alliance Oregon, Garcia told the Portland Tribune he was upset that Wheeler hadn’t asked the RSC for its input.
“The people I represent feel betrayed,” Garcia said, according to the Trib. “I can’t continue to serve on the commission in good conscience. That would make it look like the landlord point of view is being considered, which it isn’t.”
It turns out Garcia’s move inspired another member of the RSC. Nick Cook, a property manager who derives much of his business from people who entrust him to rent out and manage their lone rental property, sent notice on Monday, February 12 that he, too, was bailing from the RSC.
Cook tells the Mercury he feels the same as Garcia—that the RSC has been set up to favor renters over landlords, and that policy decisions are being made without adequate understanding of the economic and business realities landlords face.
“The 180 on that policy—from what I can tell without any data with real merit—is concerning,” Cook says. “Politics is going to trump whatever logical or perhaps factual discussion that we have.”
The question Cook says he asked himself: “If I continue on the commission, do I feel like I’ll have an impact, or do I feel Like I’m going to be part of a commission that already has a direction?”
Cook’s letter of resignation [PDF] was fairly scathing, suggesting the RSC has spoon fed “what appears to be an already ironed out agenda.”
“The premise guiding the agenda and terminology is that tenants are victims who need more protection,” Cook wrote. “There have been zero ideas or discussions on how to relieve the hardships, liability, and risk landlords face every day.”
Both Garcia and Cook’s objection to Wheeler’s reversal are a bit overblown. Prior to convening the RSC, the city created a technical advisory committee that has the express mission of studying potential changes to the renter relocation law, which mandates payments of between $2,900 and $4,500 to renters who have been issued a no-cause eviction or are moving because of rent hikes of 10 percent or more.
“The RSC was not the permanent body on the relo policy,” says Michael Cox, Wheeler’s deputy chief of staff. “There was a separate committee.”
Interestingly, while the RSC and relocation committee share many members, Cook and Garcia only sat on the former.
“I just think it’s absurd for them to quit the RSC for a decision that was not meant to be sent to the RSC,” says Margot Black, an organizer with Portland Tenants United who serves on both commissions.
To date, the renter relocation law approved by Portland City Council a year ago has always had an expiration date. That’s expected to change on February 28, when the council will take up a permanent version of the law that also includes changes. Chief among those: an end to the exemption that freed single-unit landlords from having to abide the law.
That exemption has seen repeated attacks from tenants’ advocates, and earlier this year was the subject of an analysis that suggested more than 20,000 units could be exempted under the policy. In response to the analysis, Wheeler first announced that better data was needed, and that he could not support killing the single-unit exemption. Weeks later, he reversed course.
In place of the single-unit exemption, council is expected to create an exemption for accessory dwelling units, and for duplexes in which the owner lives in one half and rents out the other.
Missing from every single one of these articles is any explanation of why Wheeler changed course. He said he needed to see data. Did he see data? No, of course not, because the City hasn’t collected any data. If he was interested in data-driven policy, he wouldn’t have voted to enact the initial relocation ordinance, much less this even more draconian one that simply punishes small-time landlords, many of whom will be forced to sell and take their units off the rental market.
Wheeler simply caved like a spineless weasel to the loud and racist PTU contingent. Shame on him. I’ll be donating to his challenger next time around.
Did somebody say data? http://bit.ly/pdx-relo-exempt
I will not be supporting Chloe Eudaly or Wheeler in any future elections, coming as someone that had voted for both of them. This is absurd – passing the burden of Portland’s housing crisis to the people PROVIDING housing, and in particular the small-scale single home landlords. This is not the way to solve any housing crunch, the problem is supply and forcing private homeowners to shoulder costs of moving that do not tie out to any actual, real-world moving costs is not going to help, it’s just going to drive up costs or create deferred maintenance situations or more people just selling their rental properties outright to avoid the hassle.
That *isn’t* data. Where *did* you get your PhD? Seriously.
The data we would want is if rents are going up faster or slower than what we might have thought if the ordinance didn’t exist. Is it making things better? My thesis would be no, it’s probably making it worse.
People who own a few rentals are probably selling in this market because in a market where the city is so antagonistic to landlords why would you want to be one? invest your money elsewhere. Especially since housing prices make it worth selling.
Looking at @Sammy’s study’s conclusion (full disclosure – my family owns one rental house, albeit not in Multnomah county):
“The single-unit exception… leaves nearly 20% of renter households vulnerable to the same double-digit rent increases and no-cause evictions which precipitated the housing state of emergency to begin with.”
I agree that no one, not multi-unit rental companies nor single-unit landlords, should be able raise rents by double-digits (unless something mighty weird happens to property taxes). Breaking a lease should certainly incur a penalty. (Calling lease non-renewal a “no-cause eviction” is foolish, though – no one should get penalized for abiding by the terms of the contract.) However, what precipitated the emergency was a lack of units given population growth. The rent increases are a side-effect of that.
“…this exemption effectively creates two classes of renters – those who are protected and those who are excluded – by virtue by the size of their landlord’s real estate investment portfolio.”
This is absolutely true. Let me rephrase: The RELO fee gives single-unit landlords a competitive disadvantage as renters are incentivized to go with a larger landlord who’s legally bound to cover RELO. This disadvantage is currently mitigated/negated by the incredibly competitive housing market, but we should consider long-term effects.
The problem remains: single-unit landlords do not have the same financial resources to cover RELO compared to actual rental corporations because of the more-or-less flat fee involved. The fee does not account for the landlord’s actual income or revenue from the unit in question. (See also: gas tax vs. street fee.)
So yes, right problem but wrong conclusion: the RELO fee needs to be scrapped, period. If there needs to be some sort of additional renter protection let it be a percentage of the rental income in some fashion.
However, if you absolutely must change the rules so only companies with deep pockets can provide rental properties, then please allow a couple years’ grace period so single-unit landlords can sell off their property rather than get cudgeled by this overhead. I know that’s what we’d do.
Apparently someone at the ‘Merc is good friends with Sammy Black, since they deleted my comment calling him and PTU out for being racist. It’s well-documented. Just scroll back through the Facebook page of local activist Cameron Whitten, where he goes into great detail that is supported by the personal lived experiences of numerous other people of color in the comments.
I’m surprised Garcia and Cook lasted as long as they did. The loud PTU crowd and the commissioner that bolsters them don’t allow for any narrative other than that of the big, bad, rich landlord. Their collective ignorance is mind numbing. As a local landlord who rented a well-cared-for home in inner SE with minimal profit, we simply can’t afford the risk of having to pay out $4,200 in any given year. Thankfully, we are currently between tenants so we can get out now. Result = one less affordable rental unit. Happy PTU?
Chloey, you hit the nail on the head. Because Eudaly and PTU are flatly unwilling to listen to anyone regarding expertise, data, evidence, or other input that does not fit their stupid ideas, they end up with policies that backfire. All of the renter horror stories you hear are at larger complexes owned by investors and managed by corporations – when have we ever seen an article about horrible renter treatment from a one-property small-time landlord? You don’t, because those landlords, with their single asset, are always more careful, responsible, and sensible about operating their rental property – in many cases, it’s literally the only asset they have, and sometimes represents the entirety of their retirement.
What these moronic relocation policies have done is make it inordinately risky for the smaller-time folks who do not have piles of cash on hand to pay a relo fee, or hire an eviction attorney (and there are many, many legitimate reasons why you might want to not renew to a particular tenant that don’t involve raising the rent, or if you need your property back for a family or personal use). And that is pushing out the people who have been operating their rentals in the way we all *want* rental properties to be operated – either they will be sold to an owner-occupier, further decreasing the number of rentals on the market and driving prices up, or they will be sold to a large investor at which point they will become poorly managed, meaning a worse situation for any prospective tenant.
PTU doesn’t care. Margot and Sammy can never buy a house, so they wanted a way to claim a lifetime entitlement to someone else’s house without working for it. They don’t care who else is hurt in the collateral damage, whether it is responsible small-time landlords or other current and future renters for whom their policies will be making things way worse. How about the raft of 9.99% rent increases we’ve seen? How about the increase in for-cause evictions? And now the absolute slow-down of new construction starts following the asinine inclusionary zoning policy implementation. All of these could have been avoided if Chloe, Wheeler, and PTU actually looked at any data, evidence, or studies, or just listened to people with actual expertise in the matter.