Appeal Tribune Wednesday, April 12, 2017 3B Oregon House OKs local rent control, bans no-cause evictions in 1st 6 months TRACY LOEW STATESMAN JOURNAL A tenant protection bill that prohibits no-cause evictions and lifts a statewide ban on rent control has been passed by passed the Oregon House. House Bill 2004 is part of a package of legislation meant to address the state’s growing housing crunch. “Oregon families are struggling against record rent increases and hous- ing insecurity right now,” Rep. Mark Meek, D-Oregon City, said during a heat- ed debate on the House floor. “Oregon is in trouble. The rental housing market is out of balance. Doing nothing is not the answer.” The bill was amended from the origi- nal to allow landlords to use no-cause evictions during the first six months of occupancy to screen out bad tenants. After six months, a landlord could ter- minate a month-to-month tenancy only for cause. It would allow landlords to evict ten- ants for business or personal reasons, such as needing to make repairs or reno- vations, selling the unit to someone who plans to live in it, or when a landlord or family member planned to move into the unit. In those cases, landlords would have to give a 90-day notice and provide one month’s rent for moving expenses. MOLLY J. SMITH/STATESMAN JOURNAL Contractors work on one of the buildings at Westown Manor apartment complex in Stayton. Opponents of House Bill 2004 fear the measure would make the state’s housing crisis worse by discouraging investment in rental properties and in new construction. Small landlords with four or fewer units would not have to pay relocation costs. The bill also would remove a state- wide prohibition on local rent stabiliza- tion ordinances for residential rental units. It would require municipalities to en- sure a fair rate of return for landlords, set up a process for landlords to request an exception to allow for a fair rate of re- turn and exempt any new residential de- velopment for at least five years. House Republicans argued that the bill would make the housing crisis worse by discouraging investment in rental properties and in new construction. “I think we should let the private mar- ket solve this shortage,” said Rep. Carl Wilson, R-Grants Pass. “The sad after- math here is so many people are raising their rental rates right now in anticipa- tion of what this body might do.” Donna Wilson is property manager at Salem’s Ned Baker Real Estate and owns four rental homes herself. She wants people to know that most landlords are not “evil, greedy slum- lords.” Many are older people who own single-family homes, she said. Wilson said she is worried because the bill doesn’t define whether a “landlord” is a property management company or the homeowners it represents. “We have clients who own one, two, three homes,” she said. “If a landlord is defined as a property management com- pany, our clients are not going to get ex- empt from paying relocation costs.” Many of her clients are people who could not sell their homes during the re- cession, Wilson said. “Now that the economy has turned, they are more interested in selling their homes. This would penalize them for do- ing that,” she said. The bill passed 31-27 on April 4 and headed to the Senate. Send questions, comments or news tips to tloew@statesmanjournal.com, 503-399-6779 or follow at Twitter.com/ Tracy_Loew DHS halts ‘differential response’ tack Kids being left in unsafe conditions JONATHAN BACH STATESMAN JOURNAL The state agency in charge of child welfare services is pausing the roll-out of a strategy that aims to keep children with their troubled families and out of foster care. The “differential response” tack of the Department of Human Services came under scrutiny following the re- lease of an internal state report showing consultants believed child welfare case- workers left children in unsafe situa- tions almost half the time where the strategy was in place. The report looked at 101 cases; con- sultants disagreed with case workers’ calls about whether children were safe in 47 of the assessments. DHS uses differential response in at least 11Oregon counties. But DHS Direc- tor Clyde Saiki said the agency isn’t go- ing to start using differential response in any new counties until it resolves prac- tice problems. “If there are any safety issues with (differential response), we should pause it all together,” Sen. Sara Gelser, D-Cor- vallis, said after DHS officials testified in front of legislators Tuesday morning. “If the safety concerns are too great to GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO expand, why would we leave kids in half the state subject to a practice that has demonstrated safety issues in the as- sessment process?” Child Welfare Director Lena Alhus- seini called for a similar assessment to be created looking at the entire state, not just the differential response counties, though timelines remain unclear on when it will publish. The move comes as a redesigned training effort is on the horizon for Ore- gon’s child welfare program, offering a ray of promise when it kicks into gear this summer. The agency’s child welfare arm suffers from high turnover rates es- timated to cost thousands of dollars per employee who leaves. New training aims to reduce that turnover and uses computer-based learning and classroom work through a staffer’s first year, according to DHS. It is set to go into effect at the start of July. While Saiki said training is critical, he voiced concerns about how the agency takes care of its workers. “I feel very strongly that unless we can solve the problem of how we support people once they get on the job on a day- to-day basis, we’re not going to break this vicious cycle,” he said. The turnover rate ranges from 23 per- cent to 75 percent, depending on the dis- trict, Alhusseini told lawmakers. Those rates not only hurt the agency’s perfor- mance but can affect finances. “The cost for each worker leaving the agency is $54,000,” Alhusseini said. “A third of our workforce always is new.” The staffers’ exodus likely has to do with their heavy workloads and other stresses native to the job. More than half of child welfare workers last August re- ported high case loads, according to a survey by Service Employees Interna- tional Union Local 503. The union sur- veyed 63 child welfare workers and rep- resents about 2,000. In an effort to bolster the number of foster parents able to take care of the ap- proximately 8,000 children in foster care, child welfare is taking to the air- waves. Foster-care public service an- nouncements are set to air on local radio and television stations from April through June. “We want to encourage people of all ages, races, religions and genders to ap- ply and become foster parents,” Alhus- seini said in a March memo. Send questions, comments or news tips to jbach @statesmanjournal.com or 503-399-6714. Follow him on Twitter @JonathanMBach.