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street roots
June 7, 2013
Housing advocates, landlords
go to the wire on Section 8 bill
BY AM AN D A
W ALDROUPE
S T A F F W R IT E R
p;
The Section 8
program is a public
subsidy program
supplementing the
rent for low-income
individuals and
families. Tenants
pay 30 percent of
their rent, while the
voucher pays the
rest. Local housing
authorities, such
as Home Forward
in Multnomah
County, administer
the program.
rogress of a bill that
would prohibit
discrimination against
Section 8 tenants has slowed
due to last minute intense,
delicate negotiations between
landlord and tenant advocacy
groups. But it is still expected to pass
the Oregon Legislature, largely due to the
political clout wielded by its chief sponsor,
Oregon House Speaker Tina Kotek .
(D-Portland).
House Bill 2639, known by many as the
Oregon Housing Choice Act, would
broaden the legal definition of a person’s
“source of income” to include federal rent
subsidies and other forms of housing
assistance. It would prohibit landlords from
refusing to lease to people because they
have a Section 8 voucher, which currently
Oregon law allows. The bill would become
law on July 1, 2014.
The bill currently sits in a subcommittee
of the Legislature’s budget-writing Ways and
Means Committee, partly because the
budget for the Oregon Housing and
Community Services department is not yet
finalized.
But lobbyists representing landlord
interests continue to ask that provisions be
added to the bill that ensure landlords are
reimbursed for damages, and that smaller
landlords are protected and do not have to
deal with cumbersome federal requirements
or paperwork.
“(Section 8) was designed to be a
voluntary program,” says Phil Owen, a
landlord and lobbyist for the Rental Housing
Association of Greater Portland, a group
that has taken a neutral stance toward the
bill. “You could participate or not,
depending if you wanted to or not. (This
bill) would make this mandatory. This is
going to be forced on us.”
Advocates say the bill would ultimately
allow people in the Section 8 program to
live in neighborhoods of their choosing and
be close to work, their children’s schools,
their family and friends. “The benefits are
going to be enormous,” says Justin Buri,
deputy director of the Community Alliance
of Tenants, an advocacy organization.
There are 8,400 households on Section 8
vouchers in Multnomah County. To be
eligible, people must make less than 50
percent of the median family income, less
than $34,000 for a family of four.
Voucher holders have 60 days to find a
landlord who will accept their voucher; if
they don’t, the voucher is lost. Between
January and September 2012, according to
Home Forward, it took a voucher holder
approximately 50 days to sign a lease. Out
of 496 issued vouchers, 74 expired, a rate of
15 percent.
Steve Rudman, the executive director of
Multnomah County’s public housing
authority Home Forward, points out that
the bill does not require landlords to accept
Section 8 tenants.
“This is about opportunity,” Rudman. “All
it does is require landlords to accept the
application from people. If in the normal •
screening process, the applicant falls out,
the applicant falls out. (The landlords
ability) to shut out that opportunity to apply
is what we believe needs to be addressed.”
The legislation would put an end to
advertisements in newspapers and Craigslist
that say “Sorry, No Section 8”.
When the bill was introduced in January,
“there was fierce opposition,” Buri says,
despite Kotek’s efforts since September to
collaborate with landlord organizations.
“We can’t allow discrimination just
because a person is a Section 8 holder,”
says Kotek. “I’ve worked very hard to
address the issues raised by landlords. I
think we’ve reached a compromise that will
ensure housing access and choice for
Section 8 holders while addressing concerns
raised by landlord associations.”
Three associations emerged as the bill’s
main opponents: the Rental Housing
Association of Oregon, the Rental Housing
Association of Greater Portland, and
Multifamily NW. But rather than come out
directly against the bill, landlord lobbyists
have couched their opposition by loading
the bill with numerous amendments.
Some of the salient amendments include:
■ Making clear that landlords could still
reject applicants based upon a tenant’s
rental history and their ability to pay rent,
■ Creating a clear expectation for local
housing authorities to carry out “timely
inspections” of rental units,
■ Mandating that lease lengths be
“standard and customary for the dwelling
unit involved,”
■ Requiring local housing authorities to
make an annual report to the Oregon
Housing and Community Services
department on how the program is working,
■ Requiring a process allowing “landlords
to p ro v id e reg u la r in p u t to lo c a l h o u sin g
a u th o ritie s ,”
■ Creating a “Statewide Housing Choice
Advisory Committee” with membership
from local housing authorities, tenants and
landlords to review policies and reforms
related to Section 8 housing.
Negotiations currently revolve around
three issues, one of which concerns a
“mitigation fund,” an addition to the bill
supported by landlord associations, that
ensures landlords are paid for any damages
caused by the tenant, beyond normal wear
and tear. The fund is slated to have
$167,000 for the current biennium, and pay
landlords between $500 and $5,000 for
claims.
To be reimbursed, landlords would first
have to sue the tenant in small claims court;
if the court finds that the tenant caused the
damage, the Oregon Community and
Housing Services Department would pay
the landlord for the repairs. The tenant
would then pay the state agency back over
time.
Home Forward has its own mitigation
fund, which started paying landlords for
damages up to $2,000 three years ago. It
has paid out five claims. “Our experience is
that it hasn’t been tapped much,” Rudman
says, a fact causing some advocates to doubt
how necessary the mitigation fund really is.
Landlord and tenant lobbyists are still
determining the exact requirements related
to tenants paying back the state. “Everyone
has different thoughts on that,” Ryan Fisher,
the lobbyist for the state’s local housing
authorities, says. “Individual circumstances
are so different.”
Owen says landlord groups continue to be
concerned how small landlords, who rent 10
units or less, will be impacted by the bill.
According to Owen, the Rental Housing
Association of Greater Portland has 1,745
members, 90 percent of whom rent 10 units
or less.
“They are not the big property owners
that have the staff, time, experience and
manpower to take care of a lot of these
issues,” Owen says. “This is an emotional
point for a lot of small landlords.”
Owen and other landlord groups say that
the program would burden small landlords.
They say participating in the Section 8
program is excessively bureaucratic and
time consuming. In addition to a typical
lease, landlords must enter into contractual
agreements with Home Forward, required
by the federal Housing and Urban
Development (HUD). “There are going to
be a few rules or contracts,” Rudman
admits.
Liz Carpenter, president of the Rental
Housing Association of Greater Portland,
says that process can take between four to
six weeks. The unit must remain vacant for
inspection, meaning landlords lose money
that could have been collected as rent
during that time. For small landlords,
Carpenter says, “that could be the profit for
the year.”
According to Home Forward, 2,500
landlords participate in the Section 8
program in Multnomah County, 70
percent of which are small
landlords. “We work with
small landlords often,” says
Jill Riddle, Home
Forward’s director of
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rental assistance
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programs, who adds
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that here has been
little complaint.
Owen says he
asked Kotek’s office
to amend the bill so
landlords with less
I
than 10 units would
be exempt from the
bill. “Kotek flatly
turned us down,” he
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says.
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Issues surrounding
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small landlords are the
reason why, Owen says, the
Rental Housing Association is
“probably a little more against
the bill.”
Owen rebuts the idea that tenants
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are not able to live in neighborhoods of
their choice because of discrimination,
saying that the problem lies in tenants’
inability to pay the rent to live in that area.
“Housing authorities don’t pay enough
rent,” Owen says.
Riddle says Home Forward has raised the
amount of rent the housing authority pays
in recent years, and tracks where tenants
live to see if it allows them to live in a
variety of neighborhoods. “It is not
changing,” she says. “It’s easy to say ‘throw
more money at it,’ but I don’t believe it’s
true.”
Another issue affecting conversations
about the Housing Choice Act is the impact
of federal sequestration cuts. Home
Forward, alone, is expecting its
administrative budget to be cut between
four and six million dollars, forcing the
agency to make layoffs and take furlough
days, which could impact services.
Currently, Riddle says, Home Forward
inspectors respond within five days for
inspections and other requests from
landlords. Fisher says it is inevitable that
such response times will be affected by
sequestration cuts, especially in areas of
Oregon with smaller housing authorities.
“The timing (on sequestration) could not
be worse,” he says.
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