Democratic leaders celebrate adoption of Oregon’s groundbreaking rent control law

Gov­er­nor Kate Brown of Ore­gon signed rent con­trol leg­is­la­tion into law at the end of Feb­ru­ary, and while many in the state and around the coun­try com­mend­ed the action to pro­tect renters, oth­ers wor­ry it is sim­ply a tem­po­rary fix that will inevitably hurt the state’s econ­o­my, as well as the con­stituents it aims to protect.

Sen­ate Bill 608 is the first state law of its kind, but rent con­trol poli­cies are some­what com­mon in large Amer­i­can cities.

New York City, Wash­ing­ton, D.C., Los Ange­les and San Fran­cis­co have had some form of rent con­trol or rent sta­bi­liza­tion rules in place for decades.

Like many coastal states, Ore­gon has seen a sub­stan­tial increase in hous­ing costs in the last decade. Medi­an rent increased rough­ly twen­ty-five per­cent in four years in small­er Ore­gon cities like Eugene, Bend and Salem.

The prob­lem is being felt in south­ern Ore­gon as well, where in Tal­ent, one in three res­i­dents spends more than half their income on housing.

Near­by in Med­ford, the rental vacan­cy rate is less than two percent.

The prob­lem of increased rental costs might be most appar­ent in Port­land. The state’s met­ro­pol­i­tan hub has seen an increase of thir­ty per­cent since 2011.

Crit­ics point to Oregon’s strict land use poli­cies as one of the biggest fac­tors involved in Portland’s increas­ing­ly unaf­ford­able rental market.

In Port­land specif­i­cal­ly, zon­ing laws are in place to pre­vent urban sprawl which, in turn, pre­vents devel­op­ment in near­by loca­tions. Port­land also has “lengthy delays in per­mit­ting process­es, oner­ous impact fees, and gaudy archi­tec­tur­al design codes,” which fur­ther the issues devel­op­ers face in the area.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic majori­ties con­trol both cham­bers of the Ore­gon Leg­is­la­ture. Sen­ate Bill 608 was passed with thir­ty-five ayes and twen­ty-five nays, for the most part along par­ty lines (three Democ­rats vot­ed nay). The House roll call was as follows:

Roll Call
Sen­ate Bill 608
Relat­ing to res­i­den­tial ten­an­cies; and declar­ing an emergency.
Third Read­ing & Final Passage
2/26/2019

Vot­ing Aye: Williamson, Alon­so Leon, Bynum, Doher­ty, Evans, Gorsek, Holvey, Live­ly, Mitchell, Pilu­so, Pow­er, Ray­field, Sanchez, Smith Warn­er, Williams, Bark­er, Clem, Fahey, Green­lick, Helm, Her­nan­dez, Keny-Guy­er, Marsh, McLain, Meek, Nathanson, Neron, Nosse, Prusak, Rear­don, Sali­nas, Schouten, Soll­man, Wilde, Speak­er Kotek

Vot­ing Nay: Bar­reto, Bon­ham, Find­ley, Hay­den, Helt, Leif, McK­e­own, McLane, Near­man, Noble, Reschke, Smith (G), Sprenger, Wal­lan, Zika, Wil­son, Boles, Boshart Davis, Drazan, Gomberg, Lewis, Post, Smith (DB), Stark, Witt

The Sen­ate approved the bill on Feb­ru­ary 12th; the roll call was as follows:

Roll Call
Sen­ate Bill 608
Relat­ing to res­i­den­tial ten­an­cies; and declar­ing an emergency.
Third Read­ing & Final Passage
2/12/2019

Vot­ing Aye: Sen­a­tors Bey­er, Court­ney, Bur­dick, Fagan, Gelser, Gold­en, Hass, Monnes Ander­son, Prozan­s­ki, Robian, Tay­lor, Dem­brow, Fred­er­ick, Man­ning Jr., Riley, Stein­er Hay­ward, Wagner

Vot­ing Nay: Sen­a­tors Baertschiger Jr, Bentz, Boquist, Girod, Hansell, Heard, John­son, Knopp, Linthicum, Thatch­er, Winters

Excused: Sen­a­tors Olsen, Thomsen

SB 608 also declared this aspect of the hous­ing cri­sis an emer­gency, so the fol­low­ing poli­cies were imme­di­ate­ly put into effect:

• Pro­hibits land­lord from ter­mi­nat­ing month-to-month ten­an­cy with­out cause after twelve months of occupancy.
• Pro­vides excep­tion for cer­tain ten­an­cies on build­ing or lot used by land­lord as residence
• Allows land­lord to ter­mi­nate ten­an­cy with nine­ty days’ writ­ten notice and pay­ment of one month’s rent under cer­tain conditions
• Exempts land­lord man­ag­ing four or few­er units from pay­ment of one month’s rent
• Pro­vides that fixed term ten­an­cy becomes month-to-month ten­an­cy upon end­ing date if not renewed or terminated
• Allows land­lord to not renew fixed term ten­an­cy if ten­ant receives three lease vio­la­tion warn­ings with­in twelve months dur­ing term and land­lord gives nine­ty days’ notice
• Lim­its rent increas­es for res­i­den­tial ten­an­cies to one per year
• Lim­its max­i­mum annu­al rent increase to sev­en per­cent above annu­al change in con­sumer price index
• Requires Ore­gon Depart­ment of Admin­is­tra­tive Ser­vices to pub­lish max­i­mum annu­al rent increase percentage

The leg­is­la­tion keeps in place the state’s pol­i­cy of pre­vent­ing cities from imple­ment­ing their own more restric­tive rent con­trol policies.

After the bill was sent on to Gov­er­nor Brown’s desk, its chief spon­sors cel­e­brat­ed. “This ground­break­ing ten­ant pro­tec­tion bill will make a real dif­fer­ence for Ore­gon renters,” said Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Tina Kotek.

“Thank you to the advo­cates who made their voic­es heard and pushed our state to address the hous­ing cri­sis. Today was one big step forward.”

U.S. Sen­a­tor and pres­i­den­tial hope­ful Kamala Har­ris also cel­e­brat­ed the bill, retweet­ing a video of Brown sign­ing it into law and say­ing, “No one should ever have to choose between pay­ing their rent each month or feed­ing their children.”

Oppo­nents warn that the law will not fix the under­ly­ing issues and could actu­al­ly make the sit­u­a­tion worse for vul­ner­a­ble families.

Research by the Brook­ings Insti­tute sug­gests that Ore­gon (and the rest of the coun­try) is actu­al­ly grap­pling with two hous­ing afford­abil­i­ty problems.

Accord­ing to the New York Times, not all prop­er­ty own­ers are expect­ing cat­a­stroph­ic results from the new leg­is­la­tion and some see it as a move in the right direc­tion when tack­ling the state’s hous­ing crisis.

“I do not believe it will be cat­a­stroph­ic to our liveli­hood,” said Jim Straub, leg­isla­tive direc­tor of the Ore­gon Rental Hous­ing Association.

Gov­er­nor Kate Brown rec­om­mend­ed that law­mak­ers and the Ore­gon Hous­ing and Com­mu­ni­ty Ser­vices Depart­ment should report back on the bill’s effects dur­ing the 2021 leg­isla­tive ses­sion. Brown also encour­aged the Leg­is­la­ture to approve $400 mil­lion in bud­get requests for afford­able hous­ing devel­op­ment, rental assur­ance and home­less­ness prevention.