Removing the right to evict people will reduce the number of units available for rent making rent prices even higher. If people can't have the right to move back into their home or empty it so that they can sell it to someone who wants to buy a home to live in then people are not going to rent their homes out, meaning they will either be sold to owner occupants or left vacant. This change would not be good for renters.

Shelby Forgot to mention when/where our next Renters Assemblies will be held on/at:

Sunday July 12th, 12:00 – 2:00PM
North Portland Library
512 N Killingsworth

Wednesday July 15th, 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Colonel Summers Park
In the covered area near SE 17th and Taylor

"The rent is too damn high. Landlords have the mostly unchecked power to kick us out of our homes for no reason at all. People of color still face discrimination when looking for housing on top of being displaced by market forces. Renters and allies in the struggle for housing as a human right, it’s time to put our heads together and build solidarity! It’s time for another installment of the Portland Renters Assembly.

Join us for one or both assemblies. There will be speakers on race and gentrification at the first, and organizing across the community at the second. Individuals will be able to tell their stories of abuse, exploitation, and displacement at the hands of landlords, developers and the housing market. There will also be hope, and to that end time for group discussion about organizing for power in our communities, building tenant unions, housing as a human right, and more. Snacks and on-site childcare will be provided."

www.portlandrentersassembly.info

Agree with econoline, that this is something that needs to be very carefully thought through and could have some real unintended consequences. This would also lead to many more people going the airbnb route with their properties...which can lead to much higher monthly income for many properties and there are no shortage of tourists using airbnb in portland. It could also lead to landlords jacking up rental rates ahead of this going into effect for units that are currently on the market (just like word of rent control implementation would), and from the rental house standpoint, could lead many landlords to just say screw it and sell their houses into what is a very frothy market.

All the landlords I know are already complaining about taxes, needed repairs (these great close in buildings in our city that are approaching 100+ years old don't fix themselves), increasingly low quality tenants, raising property management costs, etc. Now, some of this is probably them overblowing it and they need to just suck it up, but it does go to support the point that increased regulation (if it is too ornerous) could cause many landlords to act in a way that many people would see as heartless.

Sign a long lease. Make sure you rent in a multifamily dwelling. The owner cannot break your lease if they're selling all the units together, i.e., the whole multifamily property. The lease can only be broken if they are selling only the unit you occupy and only to another owner occupier. If you rent a single family home then you can be screwed.

Notice to Terminate Lease due to Sale of Property: 30 days (Or. Rev. Stat. § 91.070), or 60 days (Or. Rev. Stat. § 90.427) notice if ALL of the following are true:
The dwelling unit is purchased separately from any other dwelling unit;
The landlord has accepted an offer to purchase the dwelling unit from a person who intends in good faith to occupy the dwelling unit as the person’s primary residence; and
The landlord has provided the notice, and written evidence of the offer to purchase the dwelling unit, to the tenant not more than 120 days after accepting the offer to purchase.

AmigoDeego's right - you can't use a No Cause Notice To Vacate if the tenant has a lease, only if they're month to month. So if you started out on a 1-year lease, and your landlord didn't have you sign a new one when it finished, ask them to! It's a very normal request, especially if your rent increases - you want to be sure that it won't increase next month, too.

I have a big problem with the way this article said "No-Cause Eviction" all the way through. That seems like terrible reporting - it is NOT an eviction, it doesn't go on your record, and there's no implication that the tenant did anything wrong. I understand that having to move unexpectedly can be a big blow, but an eviction is a LOT worse. Someone who was actually evicted wouldn't be allowed to rent again at most buildings in Portland! So they're definitely not the same thing, and equating them is just scare-mongering. It's like calling an Assault a Murder - both bad, sure, but one is a heckuva lot worse. The word "eviction" doesn't appear anywhere in the law: http://www.oregonlaws.org/ors/90.427

Econoline, you need to re-read the article. No one is saying no evictions, but calling to control evictions. Ending no-cause evictions is perfectly compatible with a system where you can get rid of LEGITIMATELY bad tenants. It's often known as "Just Cause termination", like "Just Cause termination" in a workplace setting. As it is, many renters are too poor or beleaguered to identify and mount successful legal defenses against illegal or retaliatory evictions. They know that losing such a case would mean paying for the landlords legal feeds, and many landlords who issue no-cause terminations know this too.

I can think of only two reasons for keeping no-cause terminations: to provide landlords with a bulwark against legal scrutiny when they want to evict someone illegally or for protecting renters who live at the margins from getting evictions on their records if they turn to "criminal" activity for subsistence. There's a case to be made for how we protect people at the margins, but landlords have class privileges that need to be checked.

@Joe - The current standards for evictions are very tough. In addition to the uses that worry you, No-Cause terminations (which are NOT evictions) also allow landlords to get rid of tenants that are very real problems but don't meet the current legal criteria for evictions.

I just typed out a long personal example, but I'm sorry - I don't want to put it in writing on the internet, even anonymously. It would be too easy to identify the people involved. So I can't even offer anecdotal evidence for that.

I disagree that landlords have 'class privleges.' They have privileges because it's THEIR property. You used the phrase "our homes," in you first post above, which reveals the degree to which we disagree. They are NOT your homes any more than McDonald's is your kitchen. That's someone else's property, and you should not have very many rights to use it.

Reymont, you're technically right that there's a terminological difference between a termination and an eviction. But it's such a bad faith attempt at finding something of substance to critique. You accuse the writer of scare-mongering. Well, every renter knows that a termination notice IS an eviction notice, in that you have to go. It's not a de jure eviction, but it is a de facto one. They are SCARED of being physically evicted, so they try to find somewhere else to go. It's nice and all to know that, because we leave "voluntarily" that we get to maintain a record free of an "eviction", but it's navel-gazing and contemptuously pedantic.

@Joe - I don't think you have to lie and call it an eviction to get across how bad it can be. The truth is enough, without scaremongering. But it is nowhere near as bad as an eviction.

Shelby thank you for the information for the readers that have been abused. I think your information is on target, and we all need to be aware of what is in store legally.

Sure, some sort of just cause ordinance makes sense. I read over the Seattle ordinance and it basically covered a bunch of situations where a termination makes sense. I suppose it would help weed out the worst of the worst landlords who don't do repairs or maintainence and try to turn over properties as soon as any tenant makes such a request.

Coupled that with some additional notice requirements in the case of raising rent in month to month tenancies. Say, 30 days notice of a proposed rent increase from the landlord with 30 days for the tenant to accept or reject the increase. If accepted, the rent increase goes into effect 30 days after the tenant accepts. If if rejected, the landlord must give 30 days notice to move out (for tenants who have occupied a space for less than one year) or 60 days notice to move out (for tenants who have occupied a space for more than one year). That balances a landlord's property rights while giving plenty of notice to tenants.

Amigoeego, signing a longer lease would be great but one awesome consequence of our crazy rental market is that many landlords and property management companies aren't offering that option to their tenants anymore. I've heard lots of stories in our renters FB group (PDX Renters Unite!) of landlords only offering month to month either at signing or at the end of a fixed term lease. Month to month is in their best interest in this market and they know it. We asked the LL for a 2-year lease at our formal rental house , not necessarily to freeze the rent but because I wanted assurance that we could stay there for at least that long due to our plans to save to purchase a home. She agreed but the property managers talked her out of it so that she could raise the rent. She eneed up moving back into the home after a year anyway (after verbally agreeing to extend the lease another year). I don't want to say that she shouldn't have been able to do that but the $5000 we spent moving into to that home was reimbursed by my husband's employer and tax deductible; the $5000 it cost to move out the next year wasn't. It financially and emotionally devastated us in more ways than I can explain. And this doesn't just happen to tenants in a single family residences when owners want to move back in or sell. There is no shortage of stories of tenants being displaced from apartments too. I got a no-cause termination 17 years ago as a young single mom of a young baby because the on-site managers thought my coworker was my boyfriend and they didn't approve of such relations. (This was divulged by them under extreme pressure.) Yes, landlords, your property is Your Property, but when you choose to monetize it as a rental you should be beholden to standards befitting of the role of providing an essential service. A service we pay a third of our gross income on (even more of our take home pay) and the stability of which significantly impacts our quality of life. Pulling that out from under us and hence shouldering us with the financial, logistical, and emotional burden of moving should not be so casual. Except in the case of mutually agreed upon short term rentals (for a sabbatical, for example) the assumption should be that a rental is providing long term housing to a tenant. There should be a financial disincentive to ending that arrangement if the tenant has not violated the terms of the lease. I agree that we'd need to carefully craft this regulation but I'm not swayed by fear of less rentals. Most property owners still have a mortgage to pay, they can't let it sit vacant, and renting on AirBnB is limited to a certain number of days a year for "entire places", so that's not a viable alternative. The prospective landlords that decide to sell instead of rent? That's fine, the low housing inventory is part of what is driving this housing crisis. Not being a homeowner should not render one a 2nd class citizen relagated to a life of living out of boxes moving from one rental to the next. A lot of us have families and are priced put of the Portland housing market... why do landlords feel so strongly about being able to displace us on a whim?

2 thoughts:

First, this is another example of the problems caused by the housing shortage. Normally landlords would face higher costs in trying to get a new tenant and people who have to move wouldn't have such a bad time finding a new place. But if we leave housing scarce like gold instead of plentiful like water, the people who control the "gold" will have power.

Second, let's imagine we come up with some regulatory approach that protects people who want to renew. Put aside problems with supply and property rights and just consider the definitional problem: that solution only protects people who stay put. People move for lots of reasons, not just because of problems with renewal. Maybe their job changes or their family changes. Why should people whose lives aren't changing be privileged over others? That's especially relevant if we're talking about people on month to month leases who presumably are more likely than most to expect change.

The housing shortage is the problem, regulatory schemes are no substitute for a solution.

@Margot Black - that was very well written. I think you have some really good points, and I might be wrong on some stuff. Thank you!

Ha, thanks Reymont. I'm here agonizing over my stupid typos (I hate my phone) and the accidental copy/paste munging with a comment from another post, so I'm glad my point came across all the same. :)

All of this is making me want to keep both units in my duplex for Air B&B only. I make more money than I do in a lease and I know I'm gonna get paid which hasn't been the case in the past. FWIW the tenants in my rented duplex unit started paying $750 about 6 years ago and now they're paying $875. Pretty sure I'm under charging them.

@jonesrich: That's the very definition of illegal short term rental and it's contributing to our housing crisis so I hope you don't make that decision. Are you covering your mortgage, taxes, insurance, and something for maintenance? If yes, then why consider not squeezing ever dollar you can out of your tenants "undercharging" them? They're already paying your mortgage and walking away with nothing while you build equity. Charging a fair rent should mean low turnover and savings for you in the long run. Raising the rent 2-3% annually is not unreasonable as costs do tend to go up, but if they're not going up why not give them a break? The problem (well, the one I experienced) is with landlords who exploiting the housing crisis, using non-equivalent new or newly renovated properties as "comps" and raising rents 20-50% on existing tenants without making any improvements. That's what happened to me last year (30% increase) and now I'm stuck paying rent I can't afford and not being able to save anything to move. The greed of many landlords is causing real suffering in the lives of thousands of people in Portland (25% of renters in Portland are spending more than 50% of their income on housing). Thank you for not adding to it.

@bj_cefola: Our affordable housing crisis is not going to be solved by supply side economics. Just as there are many factors behind the current wave of gentrification and displacement in Portland, many strategies are needed to address it. Currently, Portland has a net loss in affordable housing, 50% of renters are spending 30%+ on housing, and 25% are spending 50%+, developers by and large are not building affordable housing, and rents are going nowhere but up. The city knows we have a crisis and although their 20M pledged to affordable feels like to little too late it's at least an acknowledgment that this is not strictly a supply problem. New York just approved a ban on rent increases on one year leases, Berlin just put a rent cap in place. Housing is an essential public resource and a human right. Time to start treating it that way.

I am facing a no cause termination right now. I talked with my owners and the property management company about staying longer and they granted me till yesterday. I asked why I was being asked to leave and they gave me 3 different reasons. The first that they received noise complaints which could be true since I shared a wall that was 4 inches think and no insulation with 3 children. But my lease stated that I needed to be notified of the complaint/s before they terminated my lease. The second was because they are selling the place and the last is that they want to renovate and remodel the duplex I live in and raise the rent. But they have someone moving in to the empty apartment next door in a week and have not made any renovations to the apartment yet. I am looking to move into a shelter or a cheap motel that is 3x my rent. I applied for a home loan 2 months before this and am waiting to get in so I asked if they would let me stay till then and that I would even accept a rent increase until then. Now i have not heard from either my owner or the property management company. So I am afraid that they went and filed an eviction on me. And either way my children and I end up on the streets.

I am facing a no cause termination right now. I talked with my owners and the property management company about staying longer and they granted me till yesterday. I asked why I was being asked to leave and they gave me 3 different reasons. The first that they received noise complaints which could be true since I shared a wall that was 4 inches think and no insulation with 3 children. But my lease stated that I needed to be notified of the complaint/s before they terminated my lease. The second was because they are selling the place and the last is that they want to renovate and remodel the duplex I live in and raise the rent. But they have someone moving in to the empty apartment next door in a week and have not made any renovations to the apartment yet. I am looking to move into a shelter or a cheap motel that is 3x my rent. I applied for a home loan 2 months before this and am waiting to get in so I asked if they would let me stay till then and that I would even accept a rent increase until then. Now i have not heard from either my owner or the property management company. So I am afraid that they went and filed an eviction on me.

@chloe_eudaly: Imagine 20 people trying to get into a lifeboat that has only 18 seats. Some people are bigger (have more financial heft) than others. There are lots of reasons why that might have happened, there are lots of ways people might frame the situation depending on where they are and how they view their prospects. But looking at it in aggregate, what are the possible outcomes?

Either 2 people go in the drink and 18 people sit comfortably, or they make room. In that case no one sits as comfortably as they might of, and it maybe challenges people's notions of what is a proper "seat", but no one goes in the drink.

I agree there are things that could be done alongside building more housing, better enforcement against discrimination and taxing landlords who don't offer long term rentals comes to mind. But at the end of the day if we don't want to exclude people we need to include them, and we can't do that without making room.

Could it be that the real estate shortage is caused by severe the land use restrictions? Nah, we need to have a shitty economy to fix this problem.

@BJ CEFOLA: I understand supply and demand (so does Chloe, the boat analogy wasn't needed) but I don't understand your second thought from your first post:

"Second, let's imagine we come up with some regulatory approach that protects people who want to renew. Put aside problems with supply and property rights and just consider the definitional problem: that solution only protects people who stay put. People move for lots of reasons, not just because of problems with renewal. Maybe their job changes or their family changes. Why should people whose lives aren't changing be privileged over others? That's especially relevant if we're talking about people on month to month leases who presumably are more likely than most to expect change."

Are you suggesting we not slove the no-cause termination issue because it won't function as a solution to those who aren't concerned about no-cause terminations?

I sincerely don't understand. Are you suggesting that the only fair ourcome is one that aims to mitigate the stress and financial impact for all people who need to move for any reason ever? I would like to see some type of safety net for renters (and homeowners paying a mortgage) in the cases of unemployment and other unpredictable life events that have massive financial impacts but I think that's a separate (albeit related) issue. This is about people who would otherwise stay put, continue to pay rent and mind their own business, who should have some security in their long-housing.

Is this why landlords and rental companies like to switch to month-to-month leases?

You should take this article down. These are not evictions. 30 days is a short time to terminate a tenancy. Maybe it should be 45 or even 60 but the problem is if you have a new tenant and right away you realize they are a problem you might have to let them stay 90 days minimum, and some problem tenants would take advantage of that a float from place to place take by the full 90 days every time. Remember, actually evicting someone for cause is expensive, time-consuming, and carries some risk that your tenant could successfully defend the eviction and hit you with penalties and statutory attorney fees in addition to solidifying their tenancy for at least another 6 months.

@Margot Black: I wouldn't object to a plan that helped people wanting to stay put if it worked alongside efforts to fix the housing shortage. I would have a problem with such a plan if it were pursued instead of fixing the housing shortage.

There are lots of reasons why people may need to move, and I wouldn't put one (rent going up) ahead of others. What's the difference between someone moving because the rent went up and someone moving because their income went down? Social insurance is a good thing and I wish we had a better and more robust safety net, but some events are uninsurable. Is the city/state going to add a bedroom onto an apartment if a household has a child? How would they help someone who changed jobs and wanted to live closer to work?

More housing makes it better for everyone, whatever their reason for moving.

BJ has a point. It's really not anything we can leave up to developers, landlords and their rent-seeking markets. Housing is public good and much more of it should be provisioned as such.

"Oregon law says either a tenant or landlord can terminate a rental agreement with no cause,"

But it only costs the landlord the price of a piece of paper the no cause notice is written on. The tenant hasbto pay a lease break fee which can be 1 and 1/2 months rent or higher.



I don't see this article addressing all the rentals that are being increased for the sole purpose of making the rent too high for section 8 tenants.

i was a landlord in SF and have several rentals now in PDX. In SF, i would only rent to those with high paying jobs. My SF friends that were landlords would avoid families and only rent to groups of friends since they would move in a few years. The far left needs to get dose of reality.

In PDX, half of my rentals are to service people and non white collar types. If talk of rent control got serious, I would immediately find a way to evict those people.

I rented about nine apartments over 15 years; three of those here in Portland. I was given a 30-day no-cause eviction notice so the landlord could make over my crappy apartment. I was free to move back in at double the rent. I also ended up inheriting part of a small apartment in another state and was a landlord for a while. I see issues on both sides.

The 30-day no cause eviction in a place where I had no option but to rent month-to-month was traumatic. It should be at least 60, or preferably 90 days. And I'm single! That 30 days was brutal and I was very lucky to find another place to live, and be able to move, and meet that deadline. If I had kids it would have been impossible. On the other hand, FOR-cause evictions could still be 30 days.

Being a landlord also sucked. The state where I owned was so protective of renters that I could not raise rents enough to meet the high HOA and repair costs. I therefore saw no point in renting out my property and sold it as soon as I could; which was when the two year lease was up. Since that fell in the middle of the year and my tenants had a school age child; I worked with them so they could move in the summer. I did not have to do that and I was losing money on the property.

Other comments have pointed out that if you make renting too much of a nightmare for owners there will be a shortage of rental units. That's true. Why should I rent out a property when I can just invest conservatively in the stock market, which over the long haul will give me a better return anyway? If you make owning a rental unit too painful, you can expect to see home values and rents spike even more, since owners would rather just live in their homes (and improve them), and look elsewhere for investment opportunities. At the same time, for now here in Portland, renters are in a very precarious situation. I was finally able to buy a house a few years ago and my primary reason for doing so was not the financial investment. It was that I never wanted to be thrown out of a place again for no reason.

my family and i just went through a no cause notice he says he's moving back but we know that is not true. he refused to return my daughter's deposit although i paid a second deposit when i took over the lease. he charged her extra rent for having children. before i moved in my daughter got behind and he showed up at her door demanding the keys to His House. We never got to enjoy living there. he raised the rent without written notice, showed up without notice and had the neighbors spy on us. he agreed to a 1/31/16 move out date then reneged giving us a 30 day verbal notice and then a written notice 30 day notice, both were illegal. We had a hard time getting the $3000 in deposits luckily our new landlords are working with us. we will be suing him for refusing to refund our deposits and breaking the previous agreement. the laws need to be change. the playing field is not level.

As a landlord that recently sold 15 units, a self managed family side business . I can say for sure the 30 day no cause, weak as it may be ( 60 days if tenant in over 1 year ) is really the only tool a landlord has to evict a nuisance or non paying renter . the way it stands now, if a tenant plays the system it is pretty easy to just run off w/o paying 1 to 1.5 months rent . Without some kind of protection for the landlord, they will and have been just compensating for these losses by raising everyone rent ( even the excellent tenants ). There are wonderful tenants for sure, but the horrible ones ( plentiful ) are why there are rules to protect landlords , just as there are many rules to protect tenants. goes both ways.