PAGE 2 | March 15, 2019 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
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...New Oregon law bars massive rent increases
From Page 1
State Sen. Betsy Johnson (Scap-
poose) and State Reps. David
Gomberg (Central Coast),
Caddy McKeown (Coos Bay),
and Brad Witt (Clatskanie).
Public testimony was
strongly in favor of the bill. In
two lengthy hearings, 147 peo-
ple testified in favor of it, and 65
against. Those in favor included
union members, leaders and
staff from Oregon Nurses Asso-
ciation, United Food and Com-
mercial Workers Local 555,
Service Employees Interna-
tional Union, Oregon AFL-CIO,
and Oregon AFSCME.
Supporters said Oregon is
suffering a severe crisis of af-
fordable housing: About two out
of every five Oregonians lives in
rented housing, and rents have
been rising faster than wages all
over the state, not just in the
Portland metro area.
Opponents seemed not to
have read the bill, and many
threatened dire consequences
based on theoretical arguments
against the concept of rent con-
trol.
“No one in their right mind
would be a landlord under this
legislation,” said Medford Re-
publican state rep (and landlord)
Kim Wallan. Wallan said she’ll
buy her future rental properties
outside of Oregon.
The bill’s chief sponsor, State
Senator Ginny Burdick (D-Port-
land), told the Labor Press those
kinds of “sky-is-falling” argu-
ments were unpersuasive: Port-
land has faced no landlord exo-
dus despite two years of de facto
rent limits under its “relocation”
ordinance, which requires land-
lords to pay relocation equal to
three months rent if they raise
rents more than 10 percent a
year.
“Seven percent plus CPI in
my opinion is very generous,”
Burdick said. “I happen to be a
landlord, and I have never raised
the rent by 10 percent on a ten-
ant.”
Tenant advocates were told 7
percent plus CPI was the best
they could get. If the limits had
been lower, the bill wouldn’t
have had majority support, de-
spite Democrats’ 18-12 majority
in the Senate and 38-to-22 ma-
jority in the House.
The legislative battle actually
began in 2017, with a bill that
would have lifted the state-wide
pre-emption on local rent con-
trol ordinances and ended no-
cause eviction. It passed in the
House but failed in the Senate
because of opposition from
Democratic Senators Rod Mon-
roe and Betsy Johnson. That led
former state rep Shemia Fagan
to challenge Monroe in the 2018
Democratic primary; she beat
him 61.9 percent to 24.7 per-
cent. Fagan said she was frus-
trated when Senate Democratic
leaders left her out of the craft-
ing of the bill, but says her win
still had an effect on other De-
mocrats.
“Seeing me primary one of
their longtime incumbent mem-
bers who was otherwise pretty
liberal on everything else.…
was a big wake-up call to them
that they probably didn’t want to
be voting against this on the
Senate floor.”
Fagan said she would have
liked the bill to set a statewide
limit and lift the pre-emption so
cities and counties could go
lower, but there weren’t enough
votes for that in the Senate.
“Sometimes it’s incremental-
ism and the art of the possible.
That doesn’t mean we’re going
to stop pushing,” Fagan said.
WHAT THE
LAW SAYS
The new law says residential rent
— during a tenancy — can in-
crease no more than 7 percent plus
the increase in the Consumer Price
Index (CPI) each year. It also ends
“no-cause” evictions once a tenant
has rented for a year; in other
words, a landlord has to have legiti-
mate grounds in order to evict a
tenant. The law has exceptions: The
rent increase limits don’t apply to
newly built units for the first 15
years. And the bar on no-cause
evictions doesn’t apply in cases
where landlords are sharing the
house or duplex they live in, or
when they need the unit for them-
selves or immediate family to live
in, or when they’re demolishing or
repurposing a dwelling, or when
they’re selling the unit to a buyer
who wants to live in it. The law only
limits rent increases while a ten-
ancy continues; once tenants move
out voluntarily or are evicted for
cause, landlords can raise the rent
on the unit by any amount. SB 608
also leaves in place a state law that
bars local jurisdictions from passing
their own rent control ordinances.
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