Opinion: Where the city falls short, Portland’s Rent Board stands tall (2024)

The Portland Rent Board officially ruled this week that a landlord was substantially out of compliance with rent control and that the landlord retaliated against a tenant for whistleblowing.

In one decisive ruling, the board showed tenants there is a government body in Portland fully willing to protect them when landlords misbehave.

The first ruling—that the landlord was substantially out of compliance (she had not registered the units, she charged above what was allowable, and she didn’t inform the tenants of their rights, any one of which constitutes non-compliance)—means the landlord is unable to collect any rent increases going back to November 2022 (the start of her negligence).

That amounts to $4,200 reimbursed directly to the tenant—$2,700 in fines and $800 in late fees.

The second ruling—that the landlord retaliated against the tenant by withdrawing an offered lease renewal in response to the tenant questioning the lease’s legality—resulted in a $6,000 fine, plus $200 a day for every day the landlord fails to rectify said non-compliance ($2,600 and counting from May 22).

These two provisions—“substantial non-compliance” Sec. 6-234 (f) and “retaliation” Sec. 6-237 (e)—were added into the city code of ordinances in 2022 by Portland voters to protect tenants and strengthen the teeth of enforcement.

And that is exactly what the rent board did.

This is very good news. Every tenant and tenant union in Portland now knows there is a quasi-judicial body ready to protect them and crack down on landlords when Portland’s Housing Safety Office fails to do either. Because, sadly, failing to crack down on landlords and protect tenants is still, too often, the fallback position with Portland.

In the past six months, three significant tenant challenges to landlord behavior have gone un-enforced by the city.

1. This past fall, a tenant filed a complaint with the city about an illegal parking fee. The city ruled the fee was allowable because it was being imposed by a third party, not benefiting the landlord. Turns out, the third party was the landlord’s wife. Still, the city did nothing. Within days of publicly submitting the same evidence to the rent board, the landlord’s lawyer admitted their mistake and paid the tenant thousands of dollars.
2. Also this past fall, two tenants filed a complaint with the city pointing out that their landlord was claiming an “owner-occupied” exemption (if the landlord lives in a 4-unit or smaller building, the units are exempt from rent control) even though he lived in Queens, New York. The city again washed its hands of it, despite mountains of evidence (including the landlord’s New York voter registration, photos of the landlord’s car with New York plates, and screenshots of the landlord’s social media postings saying he and his wife lived in New York). Once the evidence was publicly presented to the rent board, the landlord immediately acquiesced by re-registering the building as rent controlled, paying back the tenants upwards of $5,000, and reducing the rents to the rent controlled levels.
3. Then, of course, there’s the one mentioned in this column. In this instance, the tenant contacted the city about an illegal rent increase and that the building was not registered with the city. The city agreed that the rent was too high and had the landlord register. But it went no further in terms of uncovering half a dozen other violations, fining the landlord, or even charging them later registration fees as mandated by the law. The tenant had to uncover all the other violations himself and take it to the rent board.

However, perhaps worst of all, when the landlord retaliated against the tenant, the city simply said, in so many words, “Not our problem. Take it to eviction court.” It said this despite the violations being against a city ordinance, which means eviction courts have no jurisdiction. It is Portland’s ordinance to enforce and Portland’s alone.

This is not to say that all is lost with the city. The Housing Safety Office has, of late, initiated a full audit of Portland’s most notorious violator of rent control (my landlord) based on a complaint the Trelawny Tenant’s Union filed (although, two months in, we have heard almost nothing about what the audit has uncovered).

And when we have presented clear evidence of a tenant being overcharged or an illegal fee being imposed, HSO does sometimes act without the rent board needing to intervene.

But until the city, and, by extension, the City Council, understands that aggressively enforcing rent control is at the core of their responsibilities, and not to mention, one of the best tools at their disposal to confront the housing crisis and protect the working class of our city, the rent board may be our only hope.