Transcript
Automatically generated transcript. It may contain errors and includes testimony in languages other than English that is not individually marked up for assistive technology.
Candace Avalos
Good afternoon.
I call the meeting of the Housing and Permitting Committee to order.
It is Tuesday, September 15th at 2:03 PM.
Wendy, can you please call the roll?
Unidentified speaker
Good afternoon.
Uh, Koyama Lane?
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Here.
Novick?
Steve Novick
Here.
Unidentified speaker
Green?
Mitch Green
Here.
Unidentified speaker
Pirtle-Guiney?
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Here.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Avalos?
Candace Avalos
Present.
Claire, can you please read the statement of conduct?
Thank you, Chair.
Good afternoon and welcome to the meeting of the Housing and Permitting Committee.
To testify before this committee in person or virtually, you must sign up in advance on the committee agenda at portland.gov/council/agenda/housingandpermittingcommittee or by calling 311.
Registration for virtual testimony closes 1 hour prior to the meeting.
In-person testifiers must sign up before the agenda item is heard.
If public testimony will be taken on an item, individuals may testify for 3 minutes unless the chair states otherwise.
Your microphone will be muted when your time is over.
The chair preserves order.
Disruptive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others' testimony or committee deliberations will not be allowed.
If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given.
Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting.
Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass.
Additionally, the committee may take a short recess and reconvene virtually.
Your testimony should address the matter being considered.
When testifying, please state your name for the record.
If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent.
And finally, virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name.
Thank you.
Thank you, Claire.
We have 3 main items on today's agenda.
We'll start off like we always do with some general public comments on housing and permitting issues.
Then we will have a staff overview and update on the city's mandatory relocation assistance policy.
Then we will hear from Portland renters on their concerns, ideas, or suggestions as, uh, for things that we should consider as a committee.
Before we get into those items, we need to adopt committee minutes, and we are today approving our minutes from our July and August meetings.
So the minutes are approved by unanimous consent.
Are there any objections?
Without objection, the minutes are approved.
Wendy, please read item 2.
Unidentified speaker
Item number 2, document number 2026-321, Housing and Permitting Community Feedback.
Candace Avalos
All right, now we will hear from, uh, community members on any topics related to housing.
Wendy, go ahead and call up our testifiers.
Unidentified speaker
We have 2 people registered, uh, Terry McBride and Amber Cook.
Come on up.
Candace Avalos
Welcome.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Thank you.
My name is Terry McBride, and I developed this initiative from lived experience with homelessness and affordable housing.
The problem is not always that resources do not exist.
The problem is that residents in crisis often cannot successfully reach and use them.
Transportation, documentation, Disability, income, work schedules, childcare, and fragmented agency requirements can turn a manageable problem into housing loss.
The community navigator model creates one continuing point of contact who helps the resident identify the right resources, complete the practical steps, make the warm qualified, uh, warm connection, and follow through towards resolution.
I am not requesting a job or funding.
I'm asking that the county have qualified people people evaluate whether this model deserves a limited pilot.
The problem in plain language: availability is not the same as accessibility.
Residents may be sent to several agencies, asked for different documents, or expected to travel across the county while already in crisis.
What appears to be a failure to follow through may actually be a process the resident could not realistically complete complete.
A small unresolved barrier can escalate into arrears, an eviction filing, housing loss, and much greater public cost.
The proposed solution, No Wrong Door, the first contact begins a pathway to assistance instead of another handoff, named Community Navigator.
Residents know whom to contact before the problem becomes a crisis.
Housing stability plan.
Significant or interacting barriers are organized into clear responsibilities, resources, deadlines, and how-to follow-up steps.
Warm handoffs and practical help support may include documents, applications, appointments, transportation, accessibility, employment benefits, glasses, hearing aids, work clothes, or tools.
Continuity.
Continuality.
Throughout residency, support can decrease after resolution, but relationship does not disappear while the resident remains housed.
Nancy Thorington
This—.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
My specific ask is the county identify policy or program staff qualified to evaluate my model.
Convene a short—.
Candace Avalos
You have 30 more seconds.
Keep going.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Convene a short working discussion with appropriate residents, community organizers, service providers, and public partners.
Determine whether a manageable pilot is If the model is not feasible, explain the operational or policy reasons so the idea can be evaluated honestly.
Thank you.
Candace Avalos
Thank you, Terry, for your testimony and for your one-pager.
Uh, would you mind following up with my office?
I can talk to you more about that.
Sounds like we should connect you with some county folks as well.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
I do have the complete proposal available if any of you would like a copy.
Candace Avalos
Yes, let's get in touch.
Thank you, Terry.
Unidentified speaker
Amber is joining us online.
Amber, go ahead and unmute and begin your testimony.
Amber Cook
Yes, hi, greetings to members of the committee.
My name is Amber Cook.
Regarding RELO, I was a commissioner on the Rental Services Commission in 2022 when we recommended increasing relocation assistance and tying it to inflation.
Inflation increases.
I'm so glad to see it, you know, up for consideration here.
CoStar data was something forced on us by the Portland Housing Bureau under protest.
We were told we had to make our arguments based on the stats and figures in the rental housing data provided by these so-called experts.
And yet everyone involved knew that the data was not just off, but extremely off.
Claiming rents in Portland had only gone up 6% in the last decade.
Some of CoStar's major shareholders are Vanguard, BlackRock, State Street Corporation, real estate entities deep into RealPage, and other damaging practices that people in this country are trying to shut down.
So it's important not to tie RELO with that predatory source of data, but instead use local housing data combined with common sense to see that RELO must increase and continue to increase.
Thank you.
At a better rate than local rents increase or become practically useless to the renters it aims to keep from falling into homelessness for receiving a non— no-fault eviction from their landlord.
Groups like Multifamily Northwest have an openly stated goal to end RELO in the city.
Somehow the big landlords have enacted a campaign of misinformation that renters have a ton of protections in Portland to the detriment of the poor landlords.
Portland has a few good protections like RELO, but many more are needed to even begin to address the power imbalance and the mistreatment of renters, especially low-income renters, not only in, you know, providing the truly terrible while also unaffordable housing, but in how the renters are treated by their property management agents.
The small bundle of keeping RELO, increasing it, making it more effective, and untying it from CoStar.
Thank you.
Um, is an important step in fixing the ongoing, ever-worsening housing crisis.
Thank you.
Candace Avalos
Thank you, Amber.
Keelan McClymont
That concludes community feedback.
Candace Avalos
All right, let's go ahead and move to the next item.
Unidentified speaker
Item number 3, document number 2026-322, informational briefing on mandatory relocation assistance.
Candace Avalos
Thank you.
As our guest presenters come up, I'll open us— I'll open up this discussion.
So in 2017, in response to Portland's rental housing shortage, continued rent increases of 10% or more, and concerns regarding displacement of Portland residents, the council passed a mandatory relocation assistance policy specifically intended to support tenants who receive a no-cause eviction or rent increase of 10% or more within a 12-month period.
Thank you.
Since it went into effect nearly 10 years ago, the RELO policy has been amended several times by council to create certain exemptions for certain landlords and tenancies, and also to align the policy with state law.
So I have asked PHB staff today to share with us an overview of the city's current RELO policy, discuss the recommendations from the Rental Services Commission in 2022, and share an update on an upcoming evaluation of the city's tenant-landlord policies.
Displacement is costly and incredibly disruptive.
RELO is one of our only tools that directly addresses that reality, so it is important that we understand how the policy is currently working.
With that, thank you, Interim Director Light, and Josh Roper are here to share their presentation.
Take it away.
Unidentified speaker
Good afternoon, Chair Avalos and committee members.
Um, if I might, given today's topic, before we begin with the presentation, I want to take a moment just to highlight Portland's 2nd annual Renter— Rental Education Week.
And it's hosted by PHB's Rental Services Office, and it'll be from October 5th through October 9th.
And each day we will offer free 1-hour online sessions from noon to 1:00 PM, topics including fair housing protections, requirements related to sale of occupied rental properties, conflict management, and other things.
So we just wanted to be able to share this and ask people, you know, to go onto our website.
You can go to portland.gov/phb and register for those events because it's a great opportunity to— for renters to get more information with that, I will turn to today's purpose— the purpose of today's briefing.
As Chair Avalos stated, we are here to provide you an informational briefing on the Mandatory Renter Relocation Assistance, sometimes referred to as MRRA or RELO for short.
Today, we'll explain how that policy works, how the regulatory environment has changed since Portland adopted it, and how our current landlord-tenant policy evaluation will inform future discussion.
Thank you, Deputy City Attorney Nancy Thorington.
I want to be clear that we're not making recommendations or asking the committee to take any action today.
Next slide.
So we'll cover the 4 areas mentioned.
We'll give this short overview of RELO, including its history, payment requirements, and exemptions.
Then we will describe the state laws that now shape the same rental market, and then we'll review the Rental Services Commission's 2022 recommendations.
Nancy Thorington
Next slide.
Unidentified speaker
And then finally, Josh will outline the broader landlord-tenant policy evaluation that the Housing Bureau is undertaking.
I want to distinguish this historical record from a current proposal.
Again, PHB is not asking the committee to adopt the 2022 recommendations today.
We are bringing the work— bringing that work forward as one source of information in connection with a more comprehensive evaluation.
Next slide.
So I'll begin with the purpose of the— of relo and the circumstances under which it applies.
Next slide.
As mentioned, Portland adopted MRRA in 2017 and made the policy permanent in 2018.
Under certain circumstances, it requires a landlord to make a direct payment to a tenant who must relocate.
The payment is intended to help with the immediate cost of finding and moving into another home.
Generally when the relocation results from a landlord's decision rather than a tenant violation.
Because the payment goes directly to the tenant before the move, the household can use it for expenses that matter most when they're facing displacement.
Next slide.
RELO grew out of Portland's 2015 housing emergency.
At that time, average rents had increased about 30%.
Over the previous 5 years.
City leaders were concerned that rapid rent increases and no-cause terminations were forcing households to move and contributing to homelessness.
And then in 2015, um, in, in the 2015 Point-in-Time Count, a metric intended to estimate the extent of homelessness in the community, one-third of people who were unsheltered reported that they had been homeless for less than 6 months, an increase from the prior year.
Council first adopted MRRA through an emergency ordinance in February of 2017, and that original policy covered tenants who received a no-cost termination or a rent increase of at least 10%.
And then the following month, PHB convened a technical advisory group of landlords, tenants, and social service providers.
That group reviewed the ordinance and recommended technical changes, many of which council incorporated later in 2017.
Council established the Rental Services Commission that October as a public forum for landlord-tenant issues.
The commission included several people who had served on the technical advisory group.
And then in March of 2018, council made RELO permanent, separated it from the housing emergency, and directed PHB to administer the policy.
Nancy Thorington
Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
The key context is that RELO predates statewide rent stabilization.
Portland developed it as an early local response to large rent increases and involuntary displacements.
Next slide.
So RELO generally applies to 5 types of events.
You have no-cause termination, no— non-renewal of fixed-term lease, termination for a qualified landlord reason, A rent increase of 10% or more within 12 months, and a substantial change in lease terms.
Qualified landlord reasons include circumstances such as demolition, major repairs that make the unit temporarily unsafe to occupy, occupancy by the landlord or an eligible immediate family member, or the sale of an individual unit to a buyer who plans to live there.
The landlord must notify the tenant about potential eligibility.
For a qualifying rent increase or a substantial lease change, the tenant must request the payment.
And if the tenant accepts relocation assistance, the tenant must move by the applicable date or repay the assistance.
For no-cause terminations, the payment generally reaches the tenant 45 days before the termination date.
That timing matters because it places funds in the tenant's hands while that household is searching for housing and before the situation becomes a court-ordered eviction.
Next slide.
The required payments— payment varies by the unit size.
So the current amount is $2,900 for a studio or single-room occupancy unit, $3,300 for a 1-bedroom, $4,200 for a 2-bedroom, and $4,500 for a unit with 3 or more bedrooms.
These amounts are intended to cover more than the physical move.
A reloading— relocating household may need to pay overlapping rent.
They may have a new security deposit, application fees, storage, moving supplies, and even childcare.
The payment standards have remained unchanged since the 2017 emergency ordinance.
Nancy Thorington
Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
So whether they still reflect actual relocation costs was one of the central questions the Rental Services Commission considered in 2022.
So under the code, there are 12 exemptions.
They address situations such as a landlord who shares a home with a tenant, an owner who temporarily rents a principal residence, certain family move-ins, regulated affordable housing, Rent adjustments and units scheduled for demolition or permanent conversion.
The administrative requirements differ.
Some landlords must apply to the Rental Services Office for an acknowledgment of exemption.
Other exemptions apply without a filing, and that distinction affects our data.
When we can count the acknowledgments PHB processes, but those records do not show the full use of exemptions across the the affordable housing exemption is also narrower than it may first appear.
It can apply to a rent increase that results from income or program eligibility requirements.
It does not eliminate relocation assistance for a qualifying termination, and it does not apply in the same way to a market-rate unit occupied by a voucher holder.
The family move-in exemption illustrates another implementation issue.
The family member must occupy the unit 24 months— for 24 months, but the city does not have a routine system to verify that continued occupancy.
Questions about documentation, verification, and the design of exemptions are appropriate subjects for the upcoming evaluation.
Next slide.
So this next section explains how state law changed the context in which RELO operates.
When Portland adopted RELO, Oregon did not have statewide rent stabilization, but in 2019, Senate Bill 608 established an annual cap for covered tenancies equal to 7% plus inflation.
During the early part of the pandemic, that cap stayed close to RELO's 10% trigger.
As inflation accelerated, the state formula allowed increases as high as 14.5%.
Nancy Thorington
Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
That created a wider gap between the statewide limit and Portland's relocation assistance trigger.
And then in 2023, legislature— and the legislature enacted Senate Bill 611.
The current formula uses the lower of 10% or 7% plus the annual inflation measure, so a 14.6% increase wouldn't be possible anymore.
Nancy Thorington
Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
The data on this slide show a sharp decline in notices of relocation payment tied to rent increases from 27 in fiscal year '22-'23 to 4 in fiscal year '24-'25.
Senate Bill 611 likely forms part of that context because, because it reduced allowable increases for covered tenancies.
Softer market increases may also have contributed, and the data show a change in reported activity, but they do not by themselves establish a single cause.
Thank you.
So now I'm going to turn it over to Josh, and he'll walk through the 2022 recommendations and the landlord-tenant policy evaluation work we're going to be kicking off here, or that we have kicked off, right?
Josh Roper
Thanks, Quisha.
Good afternoon.
Josh Roper, Policy and Planning Director for the Portland Housing Bureau.
So Quisha walked us through the state context, and I'm going to turn to the 2022 Rental Services Commission recommendations.
And go through those in a little bit of detail.
So in October of 2022, the Rental Services Commission received 2 specific questions.
One, should the city increase the relocation payment amounts?
And should the city index those amounts to inflation?
The request reflected concern that post-pandemic inflation had reduced the purchasing power.
Thank you.
Uh, associated with payments that had been set in 2017.
It also followed a highly visible situation at the Prescott, a regulated affordable housing property in North Portland.
After a change in ownership, some tenants received very large rent increase notices.
Those increases triggered RELO and raised additional concern because the property's multiple unit limited tax exemption, or multi- Was nearing expiration.
Council responded to that immediate situation by extending the tax benefit for 5 years with county approval and being involved in arrangement of some additional rent support for affected tenants.
But this broader policy question remained.
To support its deliberations, the Rental Services Commission reviewed RELO's purpose and payment standards reviewed eviction filing trends, state rent laws, rents by unit size, and property tax changes.
So in November of 2022, the members present at a meeting of the commission voted 9 to 0 to recommend 2 changes.
First, they recommended increasing the payment standard to reflect inflation along with actual rent changes and the current cost of finding a new home.
And second, they recommended ongoing indexing of the payment standard over time.
The commission pointed to the Consumer Price Index and to rent data, and they suggested connecting the index to the framework that had been created by state law.
The recommendation expressed a clear policy direction, but it did not establish a new payment schedule or a complete indexing formula.
Commissioners also noted concerns about the accuracy and comprehensiveness of available data.
You heard mention of CoSTAR and its limitations earlier.
Those unresolved design questions matter because different formulas can produce substantially different payment amounts and administrative effects.
Council did not change the payment standards, and PHB is again not presenting the 2022 recommendations as a current status.
Proposal, more as historical context.
We will, of course, consider it— consider those recommendations alongside updated data, current market conditions, and other relevant information in connection with our broader landlord-tenant policy evaluation.
So now we'll talk a little bit about what is on PHB's docket.
In particular, the landlord-tenant policy evaluation.
So the Housing Bureau is undertaking a broader evaluation of Portland's landlord-tenant policies with support from a financial advisory services firm that has relevant policy expertise.
RELO is going to be an important part of that work, but the evaluation will consider the city's landlord-tenant policies and programs as a connected system.
The central questions with respect to existing policy are whether they achieve their intended purpose or purposes, how implementation can be improved, and whether the policies create unintended consequences for tenants, landlords, property management, or others.
The evaluation will place particular emphasis on how current policies serve low-income tenants, older adults, tenants with disabilities, and tenants of color.
It will also examine administrative burden and opportunities to make compliance easier.
Recommendations for new policy and programs and changes to existing policy and programs are all within scope.
PHB released the request for proposals in December of last year, received proposals in January of this year, selected the consultant in April of this year, and we are finalizing contract execution this month.
The evaluation has several overlapping work phases.
The core Housing Bureau team will meet throughout the engagement.
The consultant team will begin with evaluation design in coordination with the PHB team and then collect and analyze quantitative and qualitative data to support the work.
Policy and comparative analysis will build on those findings, followed by synthesis and a final report.
The overlap is intentional.
Early data and stakeholder input can sharpen the questions we ask later, rather than waiting until the end to discover any gaps.
PHP staff will make up the core project team, and the evaluation design will establish how tenants, landlords, property managers, service providers, and other stakeholders one thing I really want to underscore is that we, the Housing Bureau, do not plan to wait for the final report before learning from the work.
So during the course of this engagement, we will collaborate with the consultant team to identify lessons for policy, data, and program administration as the evidence develops.
For RELO, excuse me, that means improving the administrative data available to describe how the policy operates.
It also means revisiting the 2022 recommendations in light of today's state law and rental market.
A recommendation made during a period of unusually high inflation may still raise a valid policy question, but the answer should reflect current conditions and updated evidence.
The evaluation also gives us an opportunity to ask questions that were not central to the 2022 review.
For example, do the current exemptions reflect the policy's purpose?
Are the filing and documentation requirements clear enough?
Where do tenants and landlords encounter recurring confusion or administrative burden?
Are there practical ways to improve compliance without weakening tenant protections?
The next 2 slides are just examples of administrative data that we expect to examine in connection with this evaluation work.
So in fiscal year 2026, no-cause terminations were frequently reported triggering events with 78 reports.
You can see the descending order of frequency that we hear about these issues.
Repairs or renovations accounted for 53, family move-ins accounting for 36.
The family move-in category in particular requires some careful interpretation.
Some payments appear in that category even though the code contains a family move-in exemption.
That can occur when the person moving in does not meet the exemption-specific criteria.
For example, because the person is the owner or a spouse or has an ownership interest in the property.
This is one of the reasons why the evaluation, we are expecting it to examine definitions and reporting practices, as well as these sort of top-line counts that are also important.
So one more example of the sort of data that we will be looking at, we have looked at and will continue to look at.
This is Rental Services Office help desk yes.
Contact, contact.
During fiscal year 2026, the Rental Services Office received 728 calls, emails, or in-person contacts about RELO.
Tenants commonly ask whether a rent increase or lease change triggered assistance, whether habitability problems qualified, what to do when a landlord did not provide payment, and whether a claimed exemption was valid.
Landlords commonly asked when an increase triggers what language a termination notice must include, how to apply for an exemption, and how the different notice periods work.
The volume and subject matter of these contacts can help us identify where the code or rules create confusion, where education would help, and where the program may impose avoidable administrative burden.
The evaluation can also test whether help desk information reaches the people who face the greatest barriers to understanding or enforcing their rights.
Thank you.
You'll see a link toward the bottom of the slide deck for anybody who would benefit from support from the help desk for tenants or landlords connected to RELO or other issues.
That URL is useful.
So to close, RELO remains an important tenant stability policy, but the legal and market context has thank you.
I just want to say we appreciate the committee's interest in the 2022 recommendations.
Again, not providing them as current recommendations, but appreciate the opportunity to discuss them.
PHB's evaluation work will help shape recommendations going forward about payment levels, exemptions, administration, and the broader policy framework, not limited to RELO.
Thank you.
Candace Avalos
And we thank you so much for the presentation.
Let's kick it off with Vice Chair Green.
Mitch Green
Thank you so much, Chair Avalos, for programming this item, and thank you so much for coming here to brief us on this, Director Light and Deputy Director— is it Director or Deputy Director?
Josh Roper
Policy and Planning Director.
Mitch Green
Policy and Planning Director Roper.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
Crucial conversation and really important for Portlanders to know what the Portland Housing Bureau is thinking about in the context of rental protections.
Just in the background, we're going to have a nice hearing this afternoon on hearing directly from renters.
I put my hand in the queue for a specific question that I had, although I'll probably have more as we go.
But thanks for the timeline on the On the sort of vendor process to help you study the landlord-tenant policy evaluation.
I'd like to know a little bit more.
I mean, maybe you can't disclose who they are at this time, but I think I just want to register some concerns because you haven't fully executed the contract yet, right?
Josh Roper
That's right.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Okay.
Mitch Green
One of my chief concerns is, and I'm not saying that this is the thing that's going to happen, but It feels like from the outside looking in, when the City of Portland retains services with consultants, it often has a slant that might sort of not pay full— pay full attention or really sort of hold it— take at heart the concerns of the tenant.
And I just want to know that the consultant that we've hired is someone who understands what tenants go through.
Yes.
And has experience maybe even representing tenants or, you know, has some engagement with, you know, their own financial conditions that they face.
So I just want some assurance that when we've sought and secured this vendor, that this is a person who's entering it pretty dispassionately and really is trying to understand how to make this the best policy tool that we can and not necessarily take it apart.
Because that's the thing that I think is a feeling that might be in the room.
Amber Cook
Thank you.
Josh Roper
Yeah, I think that's a great point.
It's been on our minds throughout this entire process.
I can say who the firm is.
It's public, although we haven't, again, executed the contract yet.
It's Stout.
So it's a firm that has quite a bit of experience across a variety of topics, but including really deep expertise in the right-to-counsel context.
So that's where I was first exposed to them.
Yeah.
They've done quite a bit of evaluation work in that context.
So they have a really interesting combination of expertise that includes this very tenant-supportive angle and then a very deep financial expertise informed by landlord feedback and landlord perspective.
So it's kind of a, maybe not unique, but unusual in my experience combination of expertise.
And it's a very strong consultant team.
Happy to talk more about that though.
Mitch Green
I appreciate that, and that's encouraging to hear, especially that experience on right to counsel.
That's a big priority for us.
Um, uh, thank you.
Um, I just want to go back a little bit.
The kind of policy timeline is really helpful for contextualizing where this came from and, uh, the interaction with state law, which is important.
Um, so As you guys have analyzed the interaction with the state, um, I think one of the things that I've always been a little concerned about was, you know, this 7% plus inflation as the lower bound.
I mean, that's always just going to be about 10% because inflation's not zero.
Um, we don't have— we don't have like deflation in the United States.
Um, and, uh, and so it's really just 10%.
I think this year it's 9 point 7.9% is what the Department of Administrative Services has published as its schedule.
And that means that rents, if that's the cap, and if rents do hit that cap, that means rents double in 7 years because that's the rule of 72.
72 divided by your rate of growth, and that's how many years it takes to double.
And for folks who are on fixed incomes, Social Security, they don't get a 10% per year increase generally, and so we're getting outpaced.
So from your standpoint, looking at how rents actually change in the city of Portland, um, do you have any comment on that?
I don't know if it puts you in an awkward position, but do you think that that state law is serving renters or not?
Josh Roper
It's a complicated question.
I don't know if you want to say anything.
Unidentified speaker
I would say that this is why we're doing the evaluation, right?
We want to have a better sense of all these things so that then you can, you know, is— you look at what other policies, what other legislation might be necessary.
But we need to evaluate before we can say any of that.
And so I think that's why we're doing the evaluation, because—.
Nancy Thorington
I agree.
Unidentified speaker
Yes, the numbers that you're— the way you're describing it, yes, that would be so.
But I think what it has done at least is somewhat kept that— you're not seeing the 14% increases at least, right?
So it solved one part, but you're right, on the lower end, it's still keeping it high.
Josh Roper
And I think there's an opportunity for It's also highlighting a note that's probably worth making, which is coming out of this evaluation or during the course of the evaluation, right?
There are going to be policy and programmatic recommendations.
They might include state legislative recommendations, not just local or local policy or programs.
So that's worth mentioning too.
Mitch Green
And I'm glad that you did because, you know, thinking about the cities the relationship with our legislative agenda with the state of Oregon is always on my mind.
And knowing that it's within scope potentially for this thing to come out and recommend that we adopt maybe a bold legislative agenda to change this law for the better, I think gives me a lot of encouragement.
It provides some backing to councilors who may wish to pursue that just sort of as a—.
Councilor Herbold.
As a values-driven thing.
Yeah.
I understand that that's not something you can snap your fingers and it probably doesn't make it into this legislative agenda 'cause you have to study it.
But thanks for speaking to that.
And it was a very measured answer, so I appreciate the care and I get it.
I guess my last question would be, you know, we have a sort of fabric of policies here and At the forefront for me is anti-displacement, is making sure that, you know, within the bounds of the law, that we are doing everything we can to keep tenants from being displaced.
And so is your study kind of looking at the broad interactions there?
Josh Roper
Yeah, that is definitely within scope.
Unidentified speaker
All right.
I guess even going back to your initial question, I think another way of being able to you know, we've been, even as we've been talking about this evaluation work, layered, we've brought in other pieces because we've said, oh, we need to make sure this is included too because this is having an impact.
So there are different policies that, there are some things that weren't included necessarily, but we've been having more and more conversations, hearing from providers, hearing from renters, and understanding that, oh, we need to go back and look at our scope.
And so just even—.
Nancy Thorington
Yeah.
Unidentified speaker
Making sure you have the right scope can guide your consultant in the right way.
Mike Etterer
Thank you.
Mitch Green
And, you know, I understand that rents are softer in recent years.
The rate of change for rents on average, it's a case-by-case basis, is softer than it has been when these were initially being conceived.
But I think for me, there's some asymmetry in the market where it's like when you have a tight market and things are, You have good growth, good population growth, there's strong economic growth, and rents ratchet up pretty quickly.
But they don't come down in the same measure when you have the opposite.
So they sort of go up and then they stay up, and then they maybe don't rise very much relative to that, but they don't really generally fall.
In some cases they might if they have a lot of overproduction and you have a broader economic collapse, which you don't want, right?
And so my interest is always sort of making sure that we are We are taking advantage of a moment that we have, which is that we can adopt policies today that get ahead of the next big growth period that will drive that cap, that statutory cap.
And so I thank you for looking at this, and I suspect we'll get into some good conversation up here.
But for my colleagues, like, that's generally my motivation when I think about the proactive policymaking is I want to get ahead of the next thing, even if we're not necessarily experiencing 10% per year rent growth, which we're generally not on average in the City of Portland.
So thank you, Chair, for letting me go a little bit longer.
I might have more.
Josh Roper
Thanks.
Unidentified speaker
Sounds good.
Candace Avalos
Oh no, my computer's trying to restart at this moment.
Let's not do that.
Okay, um, thank you again so much for being here and sharing.
As I said at the beginning, I asked for this briefing just so that we could get a sense of the conditions that have changed significantly since this policy was put into place.
Because, you know, originally it was created to respond to rapid rent increases and involuntary displacement and obviously the connection between housing instability and homelessness.
And so the premise of it was pretty straightforward, that when a landlord makes a decision that forces someone to move, that move comes with real costs and tenants shouldn't necessarily be expected to absorb all of them.
So that, um, policy, uh, outcome or legislative intent is super important.
Um, and, you know, as we know, those costs have not gone away.
They've gone up, uh, in lots of ways.
And a tenant, um, has just so many overlapping things that they're facing in a move.
So they have to get a new security deposit, application fees, overlapping rent, movers, storage, uh, time away from work.
And that is all, um, while also trying to find another home that they can afford in a market that that we know is just tight and, um, not, uh, very diverse for the kinds of, um, rent that we need.
And so those realities, um, you know, have really changed, but our policy hasn't.
And so just trying to get a sense for, um, what might be some actions we can take as a council.
Um, there's also been, you know, some changes to state rent law.
Um, and then I'm curious to dig in a little bit because your data is showing that the number of relocation notices yes.
But I want to understand why.
And I think the 2 questions that I have are, are fewer people being economically displaced, or has the policy simply become less likely to reach them?
So that's what I'm trying to suss out.
And I think it's particularly important to East Portland.
I regularly meet people on the doors.
In fact, yesterday I met 2 separate people who, you know, I come and I'm like, Hey, I'm your government and I'm here to help.
And they're just like, well, I'm about to lose my house.
So it's very dire out there.
And I think we need to, like Vice Chair Green is saying, we need to start looking at the future.
We can't just look at the right now and start preempting that future where, again, it's only getting worse for Portlanders and East Portlanders are feeling it pretty heavily.
So also, I'll just say that I'm glad that, you know, PHB is beginning a broader evaluation of Portland's landlord and tenant policies.
I think that's great.
Steve Novick
Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
Great.
Candace Avalos
And also glad that you all have said, you know, you don't intend to wait for the final report to start learning and improving these policies, and neither should council.
So today I just want to understand more about what is RELO telling us now?
What is the evidence that it's showing us?
Is the policy not accomplishing its original purpose?
And therefore, what are some changes we could consider?
So let's start with this.
I As it relates to the, what is it, the amount of people using ReLo going down, can you just talk to us a little bit about why you are seeing that?
What could be the reason?
Josh Roper
Yeah, we think, we don't know for sure, but we think it has to do with the state law change and the softening of rents where we're talking about the type of relo that is triggered by a rent increase.
So because there are fewer rent increases that are lawful due to the state law change that would trigger relo, we would expect to see fewer relo applications for the rent trigger variety of relo, if that makes sense.
And then the softening of rents also has sort of a, you know, downward pressure on how much you would expect to see in terms of units that trigger that, that exceed that threshold, that 10%.
Candace Avalos
So if council's original concern was economic displacement, what evidence do you think we should use today to determine an appropriate rent increase trigger?
Josh Roper
I think there are a host of things we could consider, and I want to not step into I don't want to get into present-day recommendation territory too much, or maybe at all.
But I think, you know, asking rents, rent changes in rents, these are all the things that were considered by the RSC back in 2022 and that we would freshen the data to take another look at today if we were evaluating it or when we're evaluating it.
Candace Avalos
Do we have information though about whether the current amounts still reasonably reflect what it costs a Portland household to relocate today?
Josh Roper
We would update that information.
So that calculation is based on old data, and that's where the payment standard came from.
But if we were revising that, we would use similar data, probably additional data, to update that, and I would expect it to go up based on the numbers.
Candace Avalos
So, so, PHB, um, your evaluation raises the possibility of reconsidering the design and administration of the exemptions.
Could you talk to us about what concerns or questions, um, have emerged around the exemptions as you've been implementing this policy over the last 10 years?
Josh Roper
It has to do with the— well, in part, the volume of questions that we get through the help desk.
So that's a good rough estimate of how much confusion or administrative burden people are experiencing, both on the tenant and landlord side.
So, you know, there are 12 exemptions.
They're a little complicated.
So I think the evaluation question is, first, are these exemptions meeting the purpose of the policy?
And then, to the extent that they are, how do we streamline administration or simplify the exemptions or the documentation or, you know, fill in the blank implementation aspect to make it as easy as possible for tenants and landlords?
A good amount of this evaluation work I expect to be focused on administrative burden.
Candace Avalos
I think easing administrative burden, including for landlords, is Do we know how often tenants who are legally entitled to relocation assistance actually receive it?
Do we have any data on that?
Josh Roper
That we don't have great data on.
Part of that is by design because some of the exemptions don't require reporting to the Rental Services Office.
So we only by design get a slice, but also the data is imperfect.
So we don't have a great number for that.
Candace Avalos
What are some of the most common questions or complaints that PHB receives as it relates to the relo assistance?
Josh Roper
The feedback that was listed on one of the slides, I think, is a good summary, or at least intro to that question.
I can go through that again, but we can also put together a more comprehensive—.
Which slide?
This is slide 19.
Do you want me to share again?
Oh, I see.
Okay.
So these are some of the common questions, but we can go deeper and share additional feedback that we get from landlords and tenants.
Candace Avalos
You're saying you can follow up with us on that?
Josh Roper
Yeah, exactly.
Candace Avalos
Okay.
And then are there any populations or types of renters that PHB believes the current policy is particularly effective or ineffective at protecting from displacement?
Josh Roper
I think that's a— it's an important piece of the evaluation.
I will say accessibility has come into focus as a major need.
And I can't say one way or the other exactly what the data will tell us about accessibility and its connection to RELO, but that is an area where I think we will need to do more or could do more.
But that's not the only one.
Candace Avalos
Okay, thank you.
I think I'll pause it there for now, and let's go to Councilor Koyama Lane.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Thank you, Chair.
Um, I am curious— thank you for your presentation, thank you for being here— um, are you experiencing, hearing about, hearing about situations where someone is clearly involuntarily having to move, being displaced, but isn't being covered by the current triggers?
And If that's happening, is it coming up?
Are there certain situations?
Are there some patterns that seem to be coming up more?
Josh Roper
I think this is another one where we could follow up with more of an in-depth analysis of the help desk data that we get.
We have a team that fields these requests, but they, they manage it via a database so we can pull relevant information.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
And I'm wondering if we collect data on what happens to tenants after they receive relocation assistance?
Do we know if they remain in Portland, leave the city?
Is there any follow-up?
If so, for how long?
Josh Roper
We don't have outcome data past— to that extent.
I think it's an— it would be a really interesting thing to pursue via the evaluation.
And, you know, some of what we're going to be looking at administrative data improvements, like improvements around the data that we collect.
That kind of outcome data can be a little challenging to get and expensive in some cases, but not expensive, but resource intensive to get.
But I think it's a really interesting question.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
And this question, if you have an answer, I'd love to hear.
I'd also be interested if there are any advocates when when you testify, if you want to let me know what you think too, if you have seen the process of this.
But knowing what we've learned since this was adopted, if you were designing Portland's relocation assistance policy from scratch today, are there things that you would do differently that you wish PHB could do differently?
Josh Roper
Well, again, I will step back from making recommendations.
I will say, you know, You could point me in the direction of any policy and I would probably design it differently if I were starting from scratch.
But this is exactly the kind of stuff that we want to focus on for this evaluation work, right?
It's not just about the outcomes that we're looking for.
It's also about really getting into the policy design and how that connects to our implementation and getting the best system and I think it's also the ability to ensure that we're able to capture the right data upfront, right?
Unidentified speaker
We would know that going in.
Here are the things we want to measure and be very clear about that, and so that we can capture that and see if that policy is having the intended impact or that it needs to have.
And I think I think, you know, we can look across the city with that one where if upfront we could really think about that outcome and therefore the data that you need to see if you're having that outcome, that would be the thing for me.
Even outside of the policy itself, how are we going to measure what that— the outcomes that we said we're trying to deliver?
Tiffany Koyama Lane
That makes sense.
Thank you.
And I didn't— there was no right answer.
I was just curious if there's anything you're like, Wow, we should have thought of that.
And it makes sense that you're— sometimes something has to play out to actually know what data you want to be looking at.
And thank you all for your commitment to this.
Josh Roper
Thank you.
Candace Avalos
Thank you, Councilor.
Councilor Novick.
Unidentified speaker
Thank you, Chair.
So I just wanted to make a couple of historical observations, and correct me if you think I'm wrong.
Steve Novick
I mean, as far as the effectiveness of the state law I think that, you know, we can—.
That there was a time when we were seeing routinely like 15-20% rent increases.
Maybe that wouldn't have happened because of the softening of the housing market, but am I right that that like really was a thing?
Josh Roper
Yeah.
Yes.
Steve Novick
And also, I just wanted to say that I think that although I wasn't there when the city passed the RELO policy, I was part of conversations that led up to it in the previous couple of years.
And I do think that people were concerned about no-cause evictions, you know, in general, which is still the largest source of relo, not just increasing rent, but a variety of reasons people get evicted.
And it seems like people still are getting—.
There still are a chunk of people getting relo just because of no-cause evictions.
Those actually— have those numbers kept— I mean, have those numbers gone down or have they pretty much stayed you said the, the rent increase number went down, but have the no-cause eviction relo payments gone down too?
Josh Roper
I'd have to pull the trend data, but it's another follow-up we can do.
Unidentified speaker
Okay, thank you.
Candace Avalos
Thank you.
Councilor Pirtle-Guiney.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you, Chair.
This feels like one of the programs that we have at the city that depending on who you ask and how you ask, is trying to meet many different goals at once.
And I, as you say, of course we would build the program differently from the ground up.
I think that's often the case when we're trying to do a lot of different things, and we're not always clear on which we're optimized to.
So I just, I want to note that.
Do we have data now, or are we going to find out through this report, How, um, how do I want to word this?
I'm wondering if folks who do receive relocation assistance are finding equivalent housing, and if so, what we mean by that.
Are they finding housing that they can afford that's at a similar price point, that is a similar setup?
Yes.
Right.
Size, bedrooms, access to transportation.
Are they finding housing in the same general neighborhood that meets the convenience needs in terms of transportation, kids' school, proximity to work, things like that?
If part of— if one of the many goals of relocation assistance is helping folks through that transition, Are we actually meeting that goal compared to, for example, people who don't receive relocation assistance?
And this feels like something where, because there are exemptions, we could actually compare the experience of people who are receiving assistance versus not in finding some sort of equivalent housing.
So I'm wondering if we have that information now, and if not, if that's part of what we're going to learn in this report.
Josh Roper
I think it's a great question.
It sort of relates to Councilor Koyama Lane's post-payment outcomes question.
Sort of the same answer.
We don't have that data right now, but yes, I would say in connection with the evaluation, we should be looking at both how that consultant team can support in doing maybe a limited survey or some kind of outreach to determine outcomes after relocation payments, and then also thinking about Any potential changes that are feasible to how we implement the program to capture that data in an ongoing way.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you.
That would be great to see included.
Are we, again, as you think about changes that might come, proposals that might come out of the report, are you focused on optimizing the program for that are you thinking about optimizing the program to prevent folks from having to move in the first place?
Um, a deterrent?
Are you thinking about optimizing the program to help, um, prevent significant rent increases?
Though I know this interplays with that state law in a way where that's maybe less of an issue.
I think that's a great question.
What should we expect to see?
I know you're not going to weigh in on specific policies.
We have to see the report.
But what's the direction to the consultant in terms of what we're trying to optimize?
Josh Roper
We are— it's a great question.
I think we are— it's still flexible to some degree.
So we're going to enter into the sort of evaluation design phase.
After this contract execution.
The way I have thought about ReLo is largely around mitigating some of the harms that are associated with the displacement that ReLo responds to.
So that has been, at least in my mind, the primary framing.
Maintaining stability, not preventing moving.
With respect to ReLo, yeah, generally trying to soften the landing.
But that is just where my head is, and it doesn't need to be where, you know, where the evaluation goes necessarily, or it doesn't need to be locked into that.
We're going to be pulling in multiple perspectives.
Sorry, go ahead.
Unidentified speaker
Yeah, no, sorry about that.
No, and I think it's also when you look across, we have these other bodies of work that are out there, right?
We've got Unified Housing Strategy, we have Social Housing Study Report.
I think this evaluation and all of that, this is an opportunity to say, let's look at all of this.
And are we creating housing stability?
And that gets to after and before, right?
And so I think we— it is the ability to take all of this input and say, what should we be structuring?
What are the right policies that will contribute to the housing stability that we ultimately say in our social housing report is what we're about, right?
It's delivering housing stability.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
And that means I really appreciate that.
It gets perhaps to the answer of the next question I wanted to ask, which is, are you looking at this tool as the tool, in essence, to help create that soft landing, or are you looking at this as a tool within a broader ecosystem?
And is the report going to reflect that broader ecosystem?
Yeah.
Meaning, if you see this as one tool in a broader ecosystem, but the report is just asking about how to optimize this tool, I fear we might get proposals that don't actually take into account the other work we do.
On the other hand, if this really is the only tool you see us being able to use in the near future, we should make sure that the report is really looking at it with that lens.
Thank you.
That level of need and power.
Unidentified speaker
I don't think this is the only tool.
I think that's the one good thing that we have realized.
The heart of what you will see in that social housing study report, right, there are multiple tools, and we need to know when to use the right tool.
I think this is— the study gives you and I think if there's— I want to make sure that it's clear that this study is looking at multiple, all landlord-tenant policies.
I mean, most of our landlord-tenant policies.
It's not just RELO.
It's looking at FAIR.
It's looking at North-Northeast preference policy.
It's looking at a lot of things.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
So the report— I'm sorry.
I think in the way this was put together, I missed that.
So the report is looking at all of our tools.
Yes.
We are just talking about this one tool.
Yes.
Today?
Unidentified speaker
Yeah.
Candace Avalos
Okay.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Um, and I think you said that the, the core team that is helping to create the questions, or that has helped to create the questions— the contract is almost executed— is internal staff to the Bureau.
But you just said a moment ago there were a lot of people whose heads would be a part of this.
Is that all within the Bureau, or is there broader influence?
It's helpful when we're going to get a report back with recommendations to understand what the starting place was in terms of the priorities for the people who set out the questions that were answered?
Josh Roper
Yeah, the questions aren't solidified.
We're going to be going through this evaluation design phase, and we'll be pulling in various stakeholders to support in that work.
I think the social housing study actually might be a good sort of model for how to do that.
I think it was pretty successful in getting input from the community, from stakeholders.
I'll also just kind of piggyback on one note.
This evaluation work has been described, at least occasionally, as a FAIR review or an evaluation of FAIR.
And I just, I do want to underscore that it is, again, a broader effort to look at landlord-tenant policy existing and potential in Portland and really bring quantitative and qualitative data to the table and, you know, think deeply about the best version of the landlord-tenant policy landscape we can come up with for Portland.
Steve Novick
Okay.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Councilor, did the former committee have any conversation about priorities in this report?
It seems like this is a really big deal for our work.
It was brought forward in a presentation about a very narrow thing, And I'm wondering if council has weighed in at all.
Candace Avalos
We didn't talk about it in committee last year.
I don't know that council has weighed in in a formal way.
I mean, it seems like you all did this independently as a bureau, right?
Was council— did council request it prior to us being here?
Josh Roper
It's been discussed specifically around fare for a while, and then we sort of designed this, and it's been informed by both the unified housing strategy work and the social housing work, but more engagement will be coming once we get this thing executed.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Okay, thank you.
Candace Avalos
Okay, I don't see anyone else in the queue, so last call to comment or add more questions.
Great.
Well, thank you so much for your time.
I think importantly, what this conversation I'm hoping does is just enter this committee into this discussion because like you said, that report is about broad landlord-tenant policy.
We all know as councilors that the rent is too damn high and people are really struggling and they are looking to us as policymakers to make decisions to support, to support them.
And so this is a first step.
Whoops.
And, uh, with this forum that we'll have afterward, it's just to kind of get people thinking and talking about it.
But expect that we'll have more of this in the coming weeks.
And like you said, um, all of this is tying in with the social housing study, with the unified housing strategy.
And so as a committee, when we— as we keep discussing that, um, this, this will be— bless you— this will be part of, of that discussion, RELO and that study.
So thank you for your time.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you.
Josh Roper
Thank you.
Candace Avalos
Okay folks, let's go ahead.
We're going to do a quick break before we enter into public comment on the Renters Forum.
I am going to give us until 3:20.
Did I do my math right?
Is that 12 minutes?
That's 12 minutes.
Okay, let's, uh, come back at 3:20.
Thank you.
All right, welcome back.
We will call this meeting back into order.
Um, Wendy, can you please read the next item for us?
Unidentified speaker
Yes, thank you.
Item number 4, document number 2026-323, Renters Feedback Forum.
Candace Avalos
All right, thank you.
So we have invited renters in our city to share their concerns, ideas, or suggestions for policy changes within the committee.
Uh, and so we've got how many folks signed up?
10 At this point?
Unidentified speaker
We actually have 11 people signed up.
Josh Roper
Wonderful.
Candace Avalos
If you are in the audience or listening online and you want a chance to speak and have not signed up officially, you can come up and speak to the clerk if you are in person.
If they're online, is there a way, Clerk, No.
Okay.
So just if you're in person, you can come sign up and add yourself to the list.
Great.
So if we're ready, let's go ahead and call up our first panel.
Unidentified speaker
Great.
I will call you up in groups of 3.
And the first folks are Benjamin G., Jamie E., and Heather H. Come on up.
And just a reminder, you have 3 minutes for your testimony.
You'll hear 2 chimes.
The first one indicating you have 30 seconds left and the second one indicating your time is up.
Candace Avalos
I just want to note that I know there are some folks lingering outside that were— that you called.
So if they come in later, we'll just make sure to call them back up.
Keelan McClymont
Of course.
Candace Avalos
Yes.
Great.
Thank you.
Go ahead.
Jamie Evenstar
Should I start?
Okay.
Hi, everyone.
My name is Jamie Evenstar.
And for the sake of transparency, I am running for City Council right here in District 1.
District 4.
But today I am here as a longtime renter and as the author of all of Portland's tenant protections, including FAIR and including the mandatory relocation assistance policy that you all just spent the last hour discussing.
And I want to add some context to the numbers because I'm the one who created the formulas and negotiated the percentages.
To start, a 10% rent increase to qualify for RELO has always been too high.
Thank you.
Aye.
A healthy rental market sees an average of 2 to 3% increases in a year.
In 2017, I did an economic analysis that showed that anything above a 5 to 7% increase would tip the average Portland renter into severe rent burden, meaning that they would pay over 50% of their income on rent.
That was the metric that we used.
But because of the state preemption on rent control, city attorneys were recommending a 25% increase.
So 10% was the compromise we were able to negotiate, and unfortunately, it later became the basis for the statewide rent control cap.
And as predicted, we were sued with the claim that RELO violated the rent control preemption, but we won all the way to the Oregon Supreme Court.
RELO is not rent control.
And that means now we should right-size RELO because the number of people severely rent burdened is much higher now than it was almost 10 years ago.
We not only have the moral obligation, but the legal standing with which to lower the 10% RELO trigger to 5%.
Thank you.
To 5%.
It's an easy and sound way to prevent more homelessness.
I strongly encourage you to discuss this with Denis Valliere, the city attorney who successfully defended this policy in court, about what is possible here, because I have.
There are lots of other ways you should update and right-size RELO, including increasing the payment amounts, which were based on a formula of the average rent per unit size multiplied by 3.
Thank you.
Those numbers have also increased over the last 10 years.
But the truth is that RELA was always a workaround for the fact that the state has preempted the city from regulating rent.
And that's the real hard work that you all need to prioritize.
We must demand the state give us control over our rental markets.
The needs for housing and the cost of housing varies across the state.
Lifting the preemption would give us the ability to create our own local rent control board, as other cities have successfully done.
Thank you.
And set reasonable rates on an annual basis, because until that happens, the rent will continue to be unreasonable and too damn high.
Unidentified speaker
Thank you.
Candace Avalos
Go ahead.
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Hello, um, my name is Heather Heatley.
I am a lifelong Portland resident.
I'm not currently a renter, thank God, um, and I'm also a medical practitioner.
I'm speaking today in support of lowering the relocation trigger As our— my previous speaker said, it is too high, and the state has made it sort of an ineffective tool.
In the last past 20 years, I've worked at clinics that serve homeless, low-income, and medically fragile people, and I have seen an increase in patients who don't have stable or safe housing.
I urge you to help create a safety net for those most at risk of losing their homes.
This is particularly important for those on fixed income, the elderly, and people with disabilities.
Councilmember those most at risk of homelessness and the health impacts from the stress of losing their homes.
Moving is one of the top 10 stressors that can lead to increased risk of illness and premature death.
The relocation fee tangibly removes some of the stress of moving your home, although does not deplete it entirely.
Elana Pirtle-Guiney
Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
Benjamin, go ahead.
Josh Roper
Hello, my name is Ben Gilbert.
Mitch Green
I'm a volunteer lobbyist for the Portland DSA, and I'm a renter in District 4.
In November of 2025, Oregon reached a $7 million antitrust settlement with my landlord, Greystar Management Services.
The allegation was price fixing.
Greystar used algorithmic price— pricing tools such as RealPage to artificially inflate rent prices.
Candace Avalos
The company was accused of sharing sensitive non-public pricing data with rival landlords to eliminate Market competition.
Mitch Green
That's why I'm super grateful for Councilor Angelita Murillo's AI rental price fixing ban, co-sponsored by Mitch Green and Tiffany Koyama Lane, which passed with 8 councilors in support, but it should have been unanimous.
And it doesn't go far enough.
Over 50% of renters in Portland are cost burdened.
We need the city to demand the state legislature end their preemption on municipal rent control.
Candace Avalos
And our existing AMI-based affordable housing paradigm isn't working We have affordable housing that isn't affordable and that doesn't provide tenants with stability.
Mitch Green
We need social housing and cost-based rent.
We need housing that is permanently affordable, not just for 15 or 30 years.
Candace Avalos
We need a renter's bill of rights.
Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
The next 3 people are Heather C., Nicole M., James L. Please come on up.
Call the next group.
We have Jordan Lewis, Councilor Canal, Michael E.
Thank you.
Josh Roper
I'll let Mike sit down.
Um, yeah, uh, I'm going to take this opportunity to— my name is Jordan Lewis.
I'm a registered volunteer lobbyist with Portland DSA, and I'm going to take this opportunity to complain about some of the— just talk about some of the experiences I've had as a renter in this city.
Um, I've recently had to license a house cat To move into a place, which was kind of nuts.
I've been bombarded with like move-in fees.
I've never had people ask me for $100 plus multiple times in a row with like as little shame as has happened to me recently.
I've had to pay exorbitant pet fees, pet rent and pet deposit.
I've recently moved places and I've spent combined, Rent and deposits like three times what my rent is monthly, and that I didn't know that was legal.
But I've been asked, and I kind of just have to say yes.
To my knowledge, I'm not an expert on this.
I've had at previous places, I've had like the threat of a lease renewal like used against me.
I can complain about.
I have so much to complain about, but yeah, it's just ridiculous.
And I felt like I'd take this opportunity to talk about what I've experienced.
Candace Avalos
Thank you.
Mike Etterer
Yeah, my name is Mike Etterer.
I live in District 4.
I am actually a homeowner, also a member of the DSA Housing Working Group.
But I'm— I want to talk a bit about the experience of my son who is disabled.
And is schizophrenic.
And the difficulty of him finding a place to live when he got stabilized.
The first time he had an episode was back in 2008, and he was able to find good housing.
By 2013, that housing was no longer available.
Okay.
He has, you know, through his condition, cost the counties of Multnomah, Clackamas, and Spokane a lot of money by being homeless.
And when he was, you know, when he was able to get himself stabilized and through his own efforts, There was no— literally in 2017, after being homeless for several months, there was literally nowhere for him to live.
By the grace of God, he can live with me.
I no longer have another family in my house.
I'm alone and I can provide housing for him.
But I just think about But— All the folks on the street that don't have that option, and their families are going through hell.
They are going through hell.
And people can— and people are very brave and they get themselves stabilized and they take action to address their conditions, but they cannot afford to have a place to live.
And the answer is not more police, although the police really literally saved his life 3 times.
That's all they can do.
They can just stop someone and they can just bring them somewhere.
And so we have to have a where for folks to go to.
So very important that we get a handle on this, that we have some actual rent control, and at the minimum that we have a change to the relocation policy.
Thanks.
Candace Avalos
Thank you.
I just got word that Councilor Knoll is on the way, so we'll give them a moment.
But if you want to call the other folks that weren't here.
Unidentified speaker
We have Mariah joining us online.
Mariah, go ahead and unmute and begin your testimony.
Jamie Evenstar
Hi, thank you.
Steve Novick
Good afternoon, Chair Avalos and members of the committee.
My name is Mariah Hudson.
I live in Northeast Portland.
I was a renter for many years.
Um, I'm currently a small housing provider with just one rental, and my request really for this committee and for the council is simple.
Please just fully complete the city's landlord-tenant policy review before deciding whether renter— rental relocation assistance and whether changing that threshold from 10% to 5%.
We should really understand how the pieces of this puzzle interact before changing a policy and understanding how that's working.
And so I offer my experience here.
I have a rental.
It was my family's home for 12 years, and when we moved, I chose to rent it rather than to sell it.
And after maintenance and management fees, I don't make a lot on the property, and I know I could sell it and just put it, you know, the money somewhere else and avoid 2 AM calls entirely.
But that's not what I wanted to do.
It's a good family home.
It's in walking distance to 3 schools, and I want another family to be able to live there, not just somebody who can afford to buy it.
But I want to present that last year my fixed costs— property taxes, garbage, insurance, a little bit of landscaping— increased 4.3%.
Now, that doesn't get passed all on, and that's before mortgage payments or maintenance or repairs.
But I just want to offer this as an example, and I did put down $6,700 for new air conditioning and furnace repair.
Again, those don't get passed on.
But I've been a renter and a single parent, and I want to acknowledge moving's hard, especially with kids in schools.
I definitely support protections against unreasonable rent increases, but my rental is also a very small business.
It's my retirement someday, and over time it really has to pencil.
So when my fixed costs rise more than 4% a year, that That 5% threshold is very close and leaves little flexibility.
And I just ask that you keep other really, you know, it's city small businesses and small landlords primarily in mind when you're considering these policies.
Because this has only recently become a rental, selling is still an option for me.
If renting becomes riskier for small landlords like myself, I'm concerned that more people will choose to sell.
Thank you.
And take those homes and those opportunities for families and for people, um, to rent out of the market.
That only makes it tighter and perpetuates a problem.
I do want to keep this house as a rental, and so I ask before changing policy that could affect decisions like mine, please fully finish the study, understand what's in it, um, and take that in consideration.
Thank you so much.
Unidentified speaker
Amber is joining us online.
Amber, go ahead and unmute and begin your testimony.
Amber Cook
Yes, hi.
Hello again, my name is Amber Cook.
I want to appreciate this committee for hosting a renter listening session here in the Housing Committee meeting, and I also want to share my experience and how it would need to be done differently if you really want to hear truth from a host of renters in upcoming engagement sessions.
Openly recognize it's an act of bravery for a renter to speak out about conditions and violations when they may be retaliated against and have nowhere else to go.
Key things to set up: it has to be advertised to renters, not through standard government meeting channels.
Meet renter availability to show up without having to take off work and lose income.
Thank you.
Mitigate fear of landlord retaliation.
Publicly state expectations that tenants will not be punished for speaking their truth, and if they are, that they're generally eligible for legal protections due to the very public manner of these sessions, and provide access to the ORS.
Don't listen passively.
Ask questions and repeat back key issues.
Your silence says this is a waste of time, as their time has been wasted so many times before.
Thank you.
That it's well-intentioned but performative.
Say in advance what this could change—not big promises—but that predominant problems could shift X policy and/or Y practice more to their benefit.
Do not just ask them to come bear their trauma stories in the hope it might create some sort of change sometime down the line.
Show something of what you already know ahead of time, such as we understand that having so many PSH entered into housing without the S supportive services has created a hardship for the vulnerable.
Working poor, so we're considering putting more funds into supportive services, but need better understand how to do it effectively.
An offer to connect every renter participant to another agency or org to help them now.
Sign up properties for city or fire marshal inspections, city council property tours with tenants, have a relo one-pager and other info on low-income legal clinics, the Eviction Defense Project.
Um, Things like free therapy and counseling resources and suicide prevention.
Suicide in low-income housing is a lot more frequent than you know.
Make sure to have interpreters and actually consult low-income renters on how to run listening sessions.
Have a lot more of these and create data from them the public can access afterwards.
Unidentified speaker
Thank you.
Councilor Knall.
Samir Knall
Chair Avalos, members of the Housing and Permitting Committee, thanks for taking the time to listen to renters.
My name is Samir Knall.
I, in addition to being a city councilor from District 2, I am one of the 47% of the city of Portland who is a renter, and I'm really grateful for the opportunity to speak in that My experience is not 100% the same as everyone else's.
I've generally, in the city of Portland, rented single-family homes, and the rent changes there are a little bit different.
I— and when I rented in Seattle and New York, it was often very different.
Having the experience of being a renter most of my adult life, I've lived in a lot of apartments.
I've had landlords who were listed on alternative weekly newspapers as lists of top 10 slumlords In the past, and it showed inconsistently in the way in which those interactions happened.
I've had a lot better experiences in Portland, and I want to acknowledge that.
At the same time, I think there's a lot of things that could be done a lot better in Portland, and I'm really excited that you're taking this on.
I did want to mention, as it relates to the—.
Yes.
The possibility of looking at relocation and changing that.
My rent has gone up most years, but most of the time below 5%.
And what that means is that for many landlords in the city, capping or creating the trigger point at 5% instead of 10% would not actually change— have to affect their behavior or change their behavior in any way because they're already doing it.
So the— what the— a policy change like that would do is ultimately affect only the people who are raising it Higher, which is the point, right?
And so that's a good thing, and I wanted to, to get that on the record.
Um, the thing that I want to get across the most is inspections.
When I'm out and around and I talk to folks, the idea of sub— of low-quality housing below the level of what we consider a minimum standard of living that hasn't been seen by a city inspector in far too long is what I see and hear about the most.
Yeah.
So those are the things that I wanted to share from, from my experience.
I, I think that there's a lot here in the context of the Renters' Bill of Rights that deserves, uh, revisiting.
And I hope that in addition to talking about RELO and in parallel to all of that, those come up too.
I, I know that it's really important that we're protecting the most vulnerable people, and the most vulnerable people in the context of housing is renters.
And it's important to remember that.
That's why we have to protect people from evictions during the school year.
We have to protect people from evictions during extreme weather events.
We have to protect people from rent raises when there is a code violation.
And so, and of course, the lobbying at the state.
The last thing I wanted to mention is that we should help the whole person.
If they want to become a homeowner, that's great, but we can never pit homeownership programs that we absolutely have to fund against protecting renters and make those funding an either-or.
We have to find a way to do Thanks for the time.
Thanks for the consideration.
Unidentified speaker
Okay, calling for a second time, Heather C., Nicole M., James L. Looks like that concludes public testimony.
Mike Etterer
Okay.
Candace Avalos
Um, if there are folks who walked in the room and wanted to speak, you have 10 seconds to come up to the clerk and sign up.
So let me give you those 10 seconds.
If you did not speak and you would like to, come on up.
Keelan McClymont
Clerk, what would you prefer?
Candace Avalos
Do you just need a name?
Unidentified speaker
Yeah, if you could just give me your name and you can do it after you speak.
Candace Avalos
Welcome.
Hi, my name is Elizabeth Jones, and I can't live in Portland anymore.
I've been priced out.
Unidentified speaker
Well, honestly, years ago.
And the same is true for many of my close friends who don't necessarily have the luxury of being able to afford moving up to Vancouver and working and living there.
I've had too many friends who've been forced to go into dangerous housing arrangements or live in shelters.
Nancy Thorington
Yes.
Unidentified speaker
Because they just can't afford the rent.
And that doesn't— they work full-time.
They, they are doing their part and they're doing their best, and it is not enough.
Um, this shouldn't happen.
Uh, rent is too high.
It needs to stay—.
Candace Avalos
It needs to go down if possible.
Unidentified speaker
Um, And there's nothing more I can really say.
Candace Avalos
Thank you.
Thank you.
Last call.
Come on up.
Why don't you go ahead and speak and then we'll get your name after?
Unidentified speaker
Okay, is this the mic?
Hi everybody, my name is Madison.
Um, I was born and raised here in Portland.
I went to school downtown.
Um, and I have not really been able to afford rent very often in my adult life.
I'm 30.
I've had to live with roommates, um, in substandard conditions, I would say.
And as a college student, my first time around, I had to drop out because I couldn't afford housing.
Um, and last year I got laid off and it made it hard for me to afford rent and I had to move back in with family.
Uh, so I would say that I'm very concerned about the cost of rent.
When I was younger, I was hopeful that I'd be able to rent here and hopefully buy a house someday, but, um, it's becoming more and more difficult to do that.
And a lot of my friends have had to move out of the city because they can't afford rent either.
So yeah, it's really sad for me as someone who's local to the area to be from a poor family and most of my family can't afford to live here anywhere either.
Um, and yeah, I would say that my hope for our city moving forward is that we do more to combat the costs of new housing, because when I do look for new housing in nice buildings with appliances and safe living conditions, they're way higher than myself or anyone that I know at my income level could afford.
It's mostly reserved for people who make really over like $90,000 a year who can afford those types of new building apartments.
Any less than that, then they're going to be pretty broke trying to live in those buildings because the rent usually starts at like $1,400 for a studio.
That's what I've been seeing.
And I don't know about you guys, But I think that's way too high, and especially for renters.
If that was a mortgage, maybe it'd be worth it, but it's not worth it when it's, um, a private equity company who's price gouging you at every corner in a building that's in a part of town where all of the local buildings are being purchased and rented out at these rates, um, for people who are not even I don't know, it's— it just doesn't feel fair.
So, um, yeah, thanks for listening and thanks for having this meeting.
I appreciate all your time.
Yeah, thanks so much.
Candace Avalos
Thank you.
Okay, I don't see anyone else chomping at the bit here.
Unidentified speaker
Excuse me, could you come back and give me your name?
Thank you.
Candace Avalos
Yes.
Keelan McClymont
Thank you.
Candace Avalos
All right, folks, so thank you to everyone who came out today.
I know that, uh, it is the middle of the day.
I don't expect that we're going to get a groundswell of folks, uh, especially working folks who are struggling with their rent.
Uh, they're not going to be able to come at 3:00.
So thank you for those that could and for also representing the voices of the many Portlanders that are struggling.
Um, you know, this is— this conversation we had prior to this was about just assessing our policies as a city, what we need to be doing to increase affordability and access to folks.
I regularly, you know, as I go around and knock on doors, it's actually really difficult because that is the number one thing that I hear.
And I know that the city needs to do better to provide resources.
It really sucks, frankly, to be standing on someone's doorstep who's telling me that they are on the verge of losing their home and not having a tool right available to them.
So that is my policy outcome.
That is my goal as a legislator.
What are those immediate tools?
How can we get people that are right on the edge?
So many of our resources are dependent on people already falling off the edge, and that is contributing to the broader instability and our inability as a city to get people ahead of that curve.
This is the beginning of this conversation.
I want to let folks know that we are going to be doing a series of rental rip- We're— we want to go around and hear not only about rent, but also what are your experiences in your rentals.
For example, I had, uh, somebody who I spoke to on their door and said that, um, they reported rodents, and instead of fixing the problem, they got moved.
And it's like, sure, maybe to the landlord they were like, I solved the problem, I gave them a new place to live, but now they're living in a place that has rodents.
Yeah.
Further away from their, their workplace.
Obviously moving is not a fun thing for anybody, regardless of if you have the money to move.
And so these are the kinds of things that add up and are creating this instability, not just economically too.
So, um, these are the things that we want to hear in these rental ripoffs, and, um, hopefully from that, uh, put together a package of some, uh, actions that we can take right away, uh, in the coming year.
So So keep an eye out for that.
I'll talk more about it in committee in the coming weeks, but November, expect we'll do a round of rental ripoffs across the city.
Vice Chair Green.
Mitch Green
Thank you, Chair Avalos.
I didn't know if you wanted to use any time after this for councilors to sort of respond to what they heard.
Absolutely.
Um, okay, then I'll jump into that.
I, I want to thank everyone for coming today, and, uh, I know it's not easy to get here downtown at this time of the day.
And I know it's a risk if you're a tenant to talk about some of these issues.
And there are some specific properties that I know in my district in particular that I think tenants are acutely worried about retaliation.
And so I think I want to thank you for helping us be brave because part of the motivation for Councilor Avalos and I is, is to use our committees, and this one in particular, to make sure that we are validating that this is the people's house and this is the renter's house.
In District 4, 53% of my constituents are renters, which is greater than the average of the city overall.
And I think people sometimes forget that because District 4 is home to the wealthiest people in the city of Portland, but it's also home to 53% of renters, half of whom are rent burdened.
And so the stakes are very real, and what we want to do is make sure we use this committee as a place to raise up your voice and your power.
And so my office is particularly interested in bringing forward and developing policy that increases the power of tenants and not just sort of give a voice but increase your power.
And so stay tuned on that.
And if you have ideas, let's meet.
I want to provide some comments on the idea of rental housing as a sort of retirement plan.
And I just need to say this.
The only way that works out is if you're betting on the speculative price increase of housing over time and a pretty high cap rate.
So basically what that means is what is your yield?
Over time.
And that's incommensurate with stable rent growth and rent as a utility rather than a sort of speculative asset.
And the city that I'm trying to build, I think many of us are trying to envision, is a city where there is less, less commodification in housing.
And I think that's the only way we can get to a place where we're not pitting renters against homeowners against, you know, Everyone else, so we can all share in this together.
I'll note that the long-run average return for the S&P 500, even including the recession years we've lived through the last 20, 30 years, is 10%, 6 to 7% net of inflation.
I think it's better to put your money in the stock market to save for a rainy day, and you have fewer risks anyway.
I agree.
If you have to raise rents faster than the rate of inflation, then you're taking it from someone else who has earned a wage to pay that rent.
And I'll just leave you with this.
Adam Smith, everyone remembers Adam Smith as this sort of architect of capitalism.
You know, he's often quoted by libertarians.
But he famously said this in The Wealth of Nations.
He says, as soon as the land of any country has all become private property, The landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed and demand a rent even for its natural produce.
And so the meaning there is like when we, when we allow housing to be scarce and we allow that to be held by landlords to just do with that what they will, they're going to extract an unearned rent.
And that's what that means in economic terms.
So it also means we need to build more housing too.
We need to make housing not scarce.
So I think I think strong tenant protections, rent control, and a pro-housing production agenda that has social housing at its core is the future of our city.
And I, I hope that you help us build that.
Thank you.
Candace Avalos
Thank you, Vice Chair.
Any other comments from committee?
Okay, then with that, um, let me give you a couple announcements.
Unidentified speaker
So our next meeting is on On October 6th.
Candace Avalos
At that meeting, we are going to have a presentation and committee discussion on climate and health standards policy development.
I will share more to committee members about that, but there will be, uh, informational presentation.
Um, and then we will also have 3 executive items, including a housing finance item, an ordinance to align the city's code with state land use laws, and the Central City 2035 plan.
Uh, on October 6th, we'll hear a staff presentation and take public testimony, and we anticipate continuing that item into the second meeting of October.
With that, I will adjourn this meeting at 3:56 PM.
Amber Cook
Thank you.