In April, residents of Holgate Manor, a Southeast Portland apartment complex, were politely asked to leave—or else. In exchange, the building’s new owner, Fred Kleinbub, promised a few thousand dollars to help them move out. If Holgate Manor’s residents chose to stay, Kleinbub warned, they’d face a 9.9 percent rent increase by July.
Kleinbub’s proposed rent increase falls just under the 10 percent threshold that would have forced him to cover the relocation costs for all of his tenants under the city’s 2017 renter relocation ordinance. But by keeping the rent increase at 9.9 percent, Kleinbub could instead use his own financial incentive to quietly nudge some anxious tenants to self-evict—and legally price out the rest.
It worked. Renters living in 23 of Holgate Manor’s 82 units took advantage of the move-out offer, splintering a close-knit community.
Some of the remaining tenants are now withholding their newly increased rent until Kleinbub improves their current apartments, which they say are moldy and rodent-infested.
The Holgate Manor debacle is a microcosm of what many renters are experiencing across Portland, both in apartments and single-family homes. As landlords skirt city penalties by barely adhering to new regulations, the 45 percent of Portlanders who rent—some 300,000 individuals—are left with few options. Despite a dedicated push from city hall to strengthen tenant protections, Portland is far from creating the kind of stability for renters that Mayor Ted Wheeler promised on the campaign trail.
But Holgate Manor’s blunders might inform future pro-renter policies.
One place to begin: Requiring that landlords give advance notice to their tenants and the city before putting a residential property on the market. The city currently has no tracking system to know when a building like Holgate Manor is for sale, let alone the ability to catch the listing before it’s nabbed by a private investor.
“There is a huge lack of [city] oversight,” says Holgate Manor resident Sara Brassfield. “We could be investing in our community instead of splitting it apart.”
According to Commissioner Chloe Eudaly, resistance from the city’s powerful lobby of landlords and property developers has made that investment process difficult.
“Many people think the city can fix the housing crisis,” says Eudaly, who championed last year’s relocation ordinance. “But new regulations from the city face extraordinary resistance. Anyone who thinks we can solve the housing crisis without regulation is kidding themselves.”
Eudaly is in the midst of getting city council to pass a new tenant screening process—one that will ideally make it easier and more affordable for renters to find housing. After that, she says, the focus will be on new rules that give the city and tenants a 90-day notice before a rental property is put on the market—and the first chance to purchase the property.
While these proposed policies can’t help Holgate Manor’s current tenants, they’re hoping their pushback will help protect future Portland-area renters.
“It’s like planting a seed,” says Brassfield, “for a tree you won’t sit under.”
“After that, she says, the focus will be on new rules that give the city and tenants a 90-day notice before a rental property is put on the market—and the first chance to purchase the property.”
A blatantly unconstitutional taking that will be challenged in the courts and just cost us taxpayers more money because of Eudaly’s utterly uneducated stupidity.
“Eudaly is in the midst of getting city council to pass a new tenant screening process”.
Maybe someday the Merc will just stop copy and pasting PR from Eudaly and do some actual Journalism. She doesn’t even have support from rest of Council, which the Merc should have asked other Council members about. She has also not taken this to City attorneys / Office of Budget ahd Finance and the Housing Bureau to weigh in in the legality of it and the feasibility of this working financially and administratively for the city, which the Merc should have investigated and reported. And she still hasn’t gotten that office of landlord & tenant affairs off the ground or that landlord registry thing she promised 18 months ago up & going. So how exactly does she plan to get Council to approve this? And has she provided any outline for legal structure for enforcement, budget, administrative structure including costs and staffing needed, revenue source, required public outreach, risk assessment? Nope.
Eudaly often toots a big horn of hot air gonnas, (Airbnb enforcement, City Owned Bank, “City Disobedience” over rent control, ICE shut down, tiny home on wheels zone & code changes, etc etc), but in reality since taking office pretty much everything she’s said she’s gonna do for legal policy changes for renters has stalled, sunk, fallen flat or pfftd out like a fart: the Relo Ordinance is the exception ahd that’s only because Ted Wheeler brokered that deal with other Council members for her and his staff fixed Eudaly’s sloppy draft policy ordinances so it could be vetted legally and adopted by Council.
Also, if you’d bother to read this badly written policy, you’d see it’s really quite unenforceable in practice anyway and will only serve to add additional expenses onto tenants seeking housing since it’s an enterprise expense to landlords that will get passed along to tenants and also continue to force cheaper mom & pops out of the business to sell to big out state apartment investment corps.
Just going to point out here that all the same internet lawyers who asserted, incorrectly, that the courts would throw out the renter relocation policy are now asserting just as strenuously that a simple notice requirement constitutes an unconstitutional “taking.”
And just like the last time, they’ll hide for a couple of weeks when their crappo legal analyses falls flat again.
The new owner offered tenants $5200 each, which is $1000 more than the city requires and much more than, “a few thousand dollars.”
Also, according to PortlandMaps, housing issues have been reported since 2009… long before the new owner bought the place. Why no faux outrage all this time from the Portland Mercury?
“It’s like planting a seed,” says Brassfield, “for a tree you won’t sit under.”
The only seed Brassfield and her Chloe/PTU friends are planting is that of acrimony. And they are too arrogant and ignorant to realize that they are not doing themselves or future renters any favors.
Landlords, aka the OWNERS of the private property, can’t be forced to provide public housing or social services – no matter what Chloe and her silly staff tell you.
Relo ordinance = landlords are forced to raise the rent to cover it. Complicated socio economic analysis to process an application = landlords are forced to raise the rent to cover legal counsel. If all of this risk and annoyance doesn’t pencil out = landlord sells. And if it remains a rental, the new owner, given the new acrimonious environment Chloe and friends have created, isn’t likely to be as nice as the one you just drove out of the market.
And as far as tenants having an option to purchase, why wouldn’t they? On the open market, anyone can make an offer. Is Chloe actually suggesting the City would determine the sale price? hahahah. That would most certainly be an unconstitutional taking (h/t Euphonius).
Euphonius, that lawsuit is still currently under appeal, so it’s absolutely not true that the outcome has been decided. The number of times you have been stupid and wrong in these comments is like the grains of sand on a beach, nearly infinite.
“Anyone who thinks we can solve the housing crisis without regulation is kidding themselves.”
The supposed “crisis” is that a lot of people with more money than the present residents want to live here. Reasonable protections are necessary, but rarely remain reasonable. The supposed liberal advocates actually push conservative policies, ie, we don’t want the population mix to change from what it is now. The result will be reduced numbers of rental properties and guaranteed 9.99% rent increases. Fine with me, a city of owners will be better than a city of renters.