Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler proposed two relief measures Tuesday intended to stem a flood of potential evictions expected once protections for Portland renters expire.
The first would be a temporary change to the city’s mandatory renter relocation assistance program.
Currently, landlords in Portland have to pay their tenant money if they evict them without cause or increase their rent by 10% or more over a 12-month period. That money is meant to go toward moving expenses.
Wheeler said he believed that during the pandemic, any rent increase would likely force renters to leave their homes. To make this transition easier, the mayor said he would be pushing for an emergency council action that would make it so any rent increase would trigger these payments through the end of 2020.
“While we’re in the middle of this pandemic, we need to do our part to protect renters from the tidal wave of evictions that we know is coming,” Wheeler said. “We need to support renters who may need to relocate due to rent increases.”
He also said he would be directing the Portland Housing Bureau to allocate $500,000 of existing funding to stabilize households. That money would be prioritized for East Portland households and families that are “severely housing cost burdened” meaning they spend a significant portion of their income on housing.
The mayor has said he believed the crisis tenants find themselves in could not be solved by canceling rent completely — a demand that has been made by both national tenants rights' activists and the Portland City Council. In April, the city council sent a letter to state and federal officials, asking them to forgive all rent and mortgage payments for renters and businesses. Asked about that letter Tuesday, Wheeler said it wasn’t going to happen.
“The short answer is the City has given up on that because there just is not an interest at other levels of government of moving those two things in tandem,” Wheeler said.
He noted canceling rent completely would put pressure on building owners and landlords, who may struggle to pay their mortgages and potentially lose their properties.
"And we all saw what happened in the 2008-2009 economic collapse, " he continued. “A lot of the local housing ended up in the hands of sovereign wealth funds, insurance trusts, and private equity portfolios. And I do not want that to happen either.”
In March, the city and county had ordered a six-month moratorium on evictions for people who couldn’t pay their rent due to the pandemic. That order is set to expire at the end of this month. The mayor said Tuesday he was prepared to extend the city’s local eviction moratorium to the end of the year. The Centers for Disease Control issued its own eviction moratorium for renters last week set to last through the end of the year. The federal agency said pushing tenants out of their homes and into shelters could exacerbate the public health crisis. Governor Kate Brown has also extended the moratorium on foreclosures through the end of the year.
This story will be updated.
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