have a quorum to proceed with this
meeting. First on the
list is Christian Bryant. >> Recording
in progress. >> CHRISTIAN: I'm
here. >> Marih Alyn-Claire? >>
>> MARIH: I'm here.
>> CHRISTINA:
Laura Golino de Lovato?
>> LAURA: I'm here.
>> Allen Hines? >> ALLEN:
Here. Regina Amodeo?
>> REGINA: I'm here. Kristina Goodman?
>> KRISTINA: I'm here. >> Pippa Arend?
>> PIPPA: I'm here. >>
Moriah? I don't think Moriah is able to join
us. And we have
Matthew Maline, I forgot.
>> MATTHEW: Hello.
>> CHRISTINA: And Vivien Lyon.
>> VIVIEN: I'm here. >> I'm calling the session to
order and I'm going to call it over
to one of the RSC
co-chairs, Marih Alyn-Claire, to give some welcome
comments. >> MARIH: Thank you. Welcome,
everyone, I'm
Marih Alyn-Claire, one of the folks
on the RSC, and on behalf of all
the RSC members, I thank you for
attending the
summer listening session and we're excited to hear
your concerns about the rental primary
in Portland, it is critical that
we hear from our
community. Please know the RSC does
not investigate individual landlord-tenant
disputes. Two, the RSC
does not investigate whether local
landlord-tenant laws were violated between landlords or tenants
and the RSC does not have the
ability to issue individual determinations related
to rental housing situations or fees. What the RSC
does is make recommendations
[indiscernible] Portland City Council
about changes to programs, programs for
services or the new landlord-tenant protection
services. The purpose of our public testimony
today and all RSC meetings is to
inform the RSC what is happening in the rental market.
Your public testimony helps inform for
issues, the commission to --
for recommendations may be needed. What you have to say is very
important, and we are grateful for
you sharing your stories and perspectives
with us. Thank you.
>> CHRISTINA: Thank you, I'm Christina
Dirks, I work with the city staff
and tonight I'll be facilitating this
event and I'll give you a little overview of what
will happen. This is two hours long and
will end at 8:00 p.m. We hope to hear
from all of you who signed up to
testify. We realize this can be emotional and charged
and with that in mind, we ask that everyone
remain respectful for everyone in the room
and for all perspectives. We do have a packed
house with lots of folks signed
up which we are very happy to see.
We'll do our best to make sure we get through everybody on
the list. In order for commissioners to focus
on the testimony, we're going to disable
the chat and will not be responding to questions in the
Q&A. However, if you are having technical questions
and are signed up for
public testimony, please put in the Q&A
that you need some help and we'll do our best to support
you. Each person signed up will be given three
minutes to testify. Members of the RSC might
have follow-up questions which does not count against the three
minutes. We'll have a timer on
the screen that will let each speaker
know when each time limit is up. If folks go
over the time, they will have their audio muted
at some point, and once you hear -- once your
time is up, you will hear an audible
ding so you'll know you've reached your time. And
given the large number of folks that did sign up today, we may --
we probably will not be able to sign
up the list for additional public testimony during the meeting
tonight. However, we will assess whether we will be able to do that
when we take a five-minute break at 7:00 p.m.
for everybody to stretch their legs, use the restroom. And if you
would like to provide public testimony and you haven't signed
up or we don't get to you, we would
encourage you to attend our RSC
listening sessions in the future. We will be having
more. We don't have a date yet. And then
we do have our monthly RSC meetings that happen on
the third Tuesday of every month. We
reserve 30 minutes at each session
for listening session, public testimony and that usually
starts at 4:15 on the
agenda. We would invite anyone who
doesn't have time to give testimony tonight can
give written testimony and if you
need assistance getting your testimony into writing, I'm happy to assist
you with that process. So now I'll talk about
how to provide public testimony when you're called on. We're
going to call folks who have signed up for public testimony in groups
of three. So when you hear your name called,
please raise your hand. Your virtual
hand. And we will find you amongst
participants, we will share
your setting from a participant
to a panelist and you will see a window pop up that asks if
you would like to be promoted
to a panelist. Please click join as
panelist, the option there highlighted in
blue. Your Zoom windows will close but automatically
reopen. There's nothing you need to do at
this point. We will call individually
amongst those three folks to give
your public testimony. You unmute yourself to give
your testimony and if you would like to go on video, you can click
the video icon, the second from the
left on the Zoom control
bar. And it's your time
to speak and you are called on, do
not present or do not speak up, we will skip
you and invite you to provide written testimony. Now
I would like to invite the
members of the Rental Services Commission to briefly
introduce themselves, RSC members,
Christian, can you go ahead and call
on members to introduce themselves?
>> CHRISTIAN: I will go ahead and
unmute myself, but Christina, since I know
you have the list, I will let you call on the
next people or someone else, for the
attendees. My name is Christian Bryant,
co-chair of the Rental Services Commission, president of the
Portland association as well as the
investor association. My main focus is
on landlords that actually --
landlords quote/unquote mom and pops that
are, you know, own five
or less units between the City of
Portland and [indiscernible] by
financial changes to landlord-tenant
policy in the corporate
area.
>> CHRISTINA: Thanks, Christian. Allen, would you like to introduce
yourself?
Allen, are you available to introduce yourself right now?
We'll come back to
Allen. Kristina Goodman. >> KRISTINA: Good evening, my
name is Kristina Goodman, my pronouns
are she-her, and
I am the housing director and the
way I am currently connected to the rental market is
by supporting young people under the age of 25
who are experiencing
houselessness or -- connect to housing.
Prior to that, I was working with families experiencing
houselessness as well. And nice to see
everyone here, and do you want me to pass to the
next person, Christina?
>> CHRISTINA: Sure.
>> KRISTINA: How about you, Vivien?
>> VIVIEN: I'm representing
tenants in Multnomah County since roughly the
beginning of 2016. I am a tenant
myself, and I have been on the rental
Services Commission since September of 2020.
And I've been a
tenant advocate for
almost a
decade and I'm very grateful to be
on the Rental Services Commission.
It >> CHRISTINA: Thanks, Regina, do you
want to introduce yourself? >> REGINA: I'm Regina Amodeo, I represent the
affordable housing side of the housing market,
I work for Reach, I've been in
the affordable housing world now for
about 12, 13
years. Specifically in the Portland metro
area, and my biggest
focuses, both professionally and personally when it comes
to rental market is screening criteria and
other barriers that impede folks access to housing
and looking for ways to lower barriers while
also making sure that we're still complying
with all of the regulatory compliance
and requirements that go into managing
affordable housing, which is a world filled with
a lot of rules and regulations specific to all
sorts of funding, so trying
to balance making housing as accessible as
possible while also meeting the
demands of all of our --
and I've been on the Rental Services Commission since September
of 2020 also.
>> CHRISTINA: Thank you, Mike Nuss, would you like to
introduce yourself? >> MIKE: My name
is Mike Nuss with Rare Bird Real
Estate, I'm a small scale developer
and a real estate investor here
in Portland. >> CHRISTINA:
Thank you, Mike. Pippa Arend?
>> PIPPA: So I'm a Portland native and
most people know PARE, a
program for -- founded by women 20 years ago,
I'm no longer with PARE, and the other side of
me, I've been a housing provider for about the past 25
years, I've owned about
24 units, so -- I'm currently
a tenant and I'm glad to be
here. >> CHRISTINA: Thank you, Pippa. Laura Golino de Lovato, would you
like to introduce yourself? >> LAURA: Yes, thank you.
Hi, my name is Laura Golino de Lovato.
The Executive Director of northwest pilot
project, we provide housing placement and stability services to
low-income, older adults, age
55 and older in Multnomah County who are looking
for rental housing that they can afford. So the work that
we do is all about
connecting people with very
low incomes during
the housing market to affordable rental units and
also helping them through case management
retention services to overcome barriers to
accessing housing and also to stay in housing
so that they can live independent
-- as independently as possible. I've been
on the
Rental Services Commission since its inception in
2017, late 2017. I'm happy to
still be a part of this group. I'm
on the executive commission as well, and I'm really looking
forward to the comments and input and thoughts
that all of you have and
I encourage you to
definitely attend the regular RSC meetings
as well. Thank you.
>> CHRISTINA: Thank you,
Laura. Allen, are you able to
introduce yourself? >> ALLEN:
Yes, I'm Allen
Hines. I use he-him
pronouns and I'm the housing
access director
at TD
vision. Supports people with
intellectual and developmental
disabilities.
Supports people with intellectual and developmental disabilities as
well as people with other
disabilities with housing.
And I've also been a part of the
Rental Services Commission since 2017.
And a lot of my advocacy
here has been around
accessibility. And my
concerns for people with disabilities and for
older adults. >> CHRISTINA: Thank you, Allen. Thank you
to all the commissioners for
introducing yourselves. Before we get
started, I want to make one final
announcement, we are recruiting
for RSC vacancies that will be coming
up in the fall. I'll put more information in
the chat if anyone is interested in becoming an RSC
member, and I'll call the first three individuals to
provide public testimony, so if you hear your name,
please raise your hand and
you can see that in the middle, towards
the slight right of the Zoom toolbar there, which will either be
at the top or the bottom of your screen, so
the first three names I
have are
Amber Cook -- sorry, I lost the
list. One second. Too
many screens open. Thank you. Amber Cook,
Sammy Epstein, and James
Albert.
Okay. Great. Fantastic.
All right. James Albert, would you
like to go first?
Let's go ahead and go to Amber Cook. I'll come back
to James.
Amber Cook? >>
>> AMBER: There we go. Just came off
of a birthday Zoom, so apologize for
that. I would love -- I appreciate that this
is -- that this is happening, it's a very,
very crucial part of any kind of
housing authority and housing representation to make sure that people who work
have an opportunity to be heard, so I just want
to, you know, kind of give
my appreciation for this listening session. You know, to go
ahead, I'm just going to speak
kind of briefly on what's --
near for key housing issues
that really need work with the
goal, you know, my -- for the
Rental Services Commission to be advocating for those things in the
-- on the city council. You know,
really, kind of the things
I've been -- kind of organizing in housing
advocacy for about four years in low-income
housing, so these are things from, you know,
press conferences to working with cad to
working with Oregon action and in my building and
working with OHCS,
et cetera, so some larger experiences, but these are the things
to me that are key, you know, which include,
of course, housing is a huge
problem in terms of its cost and its
price. And Portland is not a place for
property owners to get rich. It's a city for
people to live in and rents should never
be allowed to soar the way they have in the last
decade, so rents need to
be controlled so Portlanders can live
here. We are still in an economic crisis coming out
of COVID. We cannot allow rent
increases. In my building, you know, rent --
rental assistance is basically over. All the housing protections are
over, and one by one, every week,
people in my building are getting their
eviction notices because they can't afford to pay their
rents. And just looking at
the time, based, you know,
the description, of course, what the Rental Services Commission
is, we need -- we need a housing
body, a housing authority in Oregon that renters
can go to that does help with
the landlord-tenant laws when they aren't being
followed. It isn't simply feasible for
every tenant to do -- when a landlord
sets them up with an oppressive lease, access, that kind of
thing. So I would almost say aside from
affordable rents, the thing we
most need to advocate for renters in the power and
balance that exists so renters can have
decent living spaces. The time is running out, so going to
finish up with just the last point is to ask
the Rental Services Commission to continue to
push for PTUs,
tenant protections, these are the things I'm sharing and advocating
for. Thank you for your time and
listening. >> CHRISTINA: Thank you,
Amber. If any RSC members have questions
for Amber, please raise your hand.
Okay. Sammy
Epstein. >> SAMMY: Can
you hear me? >> CHRISTINA: Yes, we can
hear you Sammy. >> SAMMY:
Terrific. I don't see a timer, so if you let me know when
there's one minute left, I would appreciate that. I'm a property
owner of one house.
Okay? And as
much as any of us can be concerned for renters
having places to live, there is another side
to the story, and
my questions include,
is there any plan after SB
891 sunsets for
the legislature to say,
definitively, that that phase
of protection for
renters is now finished and
landlords can actually operate in a
vein that allows rent to be collected? Having a
tenant that hasn't paid rent for two years and
is gainfully employed is, to me
the other side of the coin. The other
point that I want to ask about
has to do with the
mandatory relocation. And my
understanding is that was -- has been
questioned in the Oregon Supreme Court and it's been
sitting there for, as far as I know, more
than a year. And no movement
-- I have not been able to kind any motion --
any movement or any indication that it's moving one way or
the other. And here's another situation that can be a
thorn in the side of the
other side of the equation, which is a
landlord who wants to be a good
landlord but is basically being taken advantage of by
a tenant that
uses free services to
get free rent. And
that tenant's rent has been paid for by public
services for two plus years
and I want to see
a return to actually
respecting landlord-tenant law and contracts. I
mean, a contract is a contract, and has been
annulled during this time. >> You have 30
seconds left. Letting you know. >> SAMMY: Thank you
so much. And I would appreciate hearing from the
Commission. I don't know if that will happen
this evening, but I think I've made my points.
I hope they've been clear. Let me know if there are any questions
about what I've expressed.
Thank you. >> CHRISTINA: Thank you,
Sammy. Any questions for
Sammy? Yes.
I think Vivian has
a question? Go ahead,
Vivien. >> VIVIEN: Sammy, you said that
you have a tenant who has not been paying rent for
the past two years who is employed. You also
said, I believe you said that an outside agency has paid
that rent. Is that correct?
>> SAMMY: That's correct. >> VIVIEN: Okay.
Have they paid all of the rent?
>> SAMMY: As of two days ago, they now have, and
it's been -- but
my -- but I'm guessing that
the tenant is going to try again for this
situation, that he has done three or four times already
now. And my understanding of SB 891
is it's not going to work anymore because
as of June 30th, any application for
additional assistance is not going to result
in a conviction
moratorium. >> VIVIEN:
Well, I -- I don't feel that I can answer
your question in this forum. I
do have one follow-up
question. You said that
you just got another payment as
of two days ago. Sammy: I think one
day ago, yes. >> VIVIEN: Have you
consulted with an attorney to get your questions answered about
SB 891? >> SAMMY: Oh, yes.
Of course. It's through a
property management
company, and basically we've had to
cancel our court date, our -- I think three times
now because the money just comes in
in a nick of time, just before the court
date is to occur. >> VIVIEN: Has this
caused you to miss mortgage payments?
>> SAMMY: This has caused me to have delays in
the money coming in and
have experienced legal costs and
I think the question of mortgage is another
question entirely, and outside of the scope
of what I was asking. >> VIVIEN: Okay. Well, thank you for
answering my question. >> SAMMY: And your name again,
please? >> VIVIEN: My name is Vivien Lyon.
>> SAMMY: Thank you, Vivien,
appreciate it. >> CHRISTIAN: [Indiscernible] obviously, I've
talked to a representative with
the state,
protections beyond September and
[indiscernible]. >> CHRISTINA:
Christian, we can't really hear
you very well. >> CHRISTIAN: Can you hear
me now?
>> CHRISTINA: It's better. >> CHRISTIAN: Everybody
I've spoke to has no
interest in extending it beyond September, so that
will probably happen, to your
question. It's unfortunate because there are
a lot of landlords in your position,
bankruptcies, and I do understand your
concerns have been
heard and are being ignored
at the state level.
>> SAMMY: Christian, is it? >> CHRISTIAN: Christian
Bryant. >> SAMMY:
Appreciate it.
>> CHRISTINA: I'm going to give one more call for James
Albert. Okay. Next three, please raise your hand if
you hear your
name. Raymond
ely, Tara Palmer
strutsman and Margaret
Malik. I'll say
those one more time,
Raymond Eli, Tara
Palmer Strutsman and Margaret
Malik. Okay. Next
three on the list,
Sonresa
Gleason, Ted
Asenagas and Audrey
Hernandez. I see Ted's hand
raised. Thank you.
Sonresa Gleason and Audrey Hernandez.
Okay. Ted, go ahead,
please.
>>
video?
Unmute your audio? >> TED: Can you hear me
now? >> CHRISTINA: Yes, we can hear you. >> TED: My
name is Ted, and
I had one home in north Portland. I was a
landlord for -- about three
years. I'm not anymore a
landlord. The last three years being very hard to work
with the tenant. I
learned a lot and
it's not something that I want to deal
with. I'd rather leave my home vacant
than deal with all the
things I went
through. Portland is doing
a lot of things to protect people and that's a
good thing. There's
rent protections, and the [indiscernible]
fee, that's a good thing, but
landlords should not forced to be have a
tenant for one reason to stick with one tenant
and to violate tenants who have eviction
history, unemployed or unemployable
for many reasons. A
tenant in section 8 for more
than 20 years, been using the
system to pay
his rent so I would
ask the City of Portland to
terminate the [indiscernible]. Landlords, they should be
able to own their home
easily by terminating
90 days cease -- I don't object it, but
landlords, they should not have -- they should not be forced
to be a landlord in the
wrong -- with the wrong
tenant. Now,
I think there is a [indiscernible] that
shows many homes are being sold, many homes are
empty. There are many homes that landlords, they don't want to
rent it, and one of
my -- one of my home
is [indiscernible], it's not rented, and I'm not
willing to rent it. So -- and
the reason is because of the Portland laws.
Landlord cannot afford to run
their business with the
lawyers. And that's the reason
they can't is their rent is
expensive, because every issue
they have to run have to
comment and -- and lawyers
are not cheap. So that's
my input. Thank you.
>> CHRISTINA: Thank you, Ted. Does anybody have any questions for
Ted?
Okay. I'm going to call the next three folks on the
list, please raise your hand if you
hear your list.
Isar Dean,
Olivia
Talbert.
All right. Olivia, would you like to give
your public testimony now, please?
O. >> OLIVIA:
I can go. Did you say
Olivia? I'm a landlord of a
single property, and my
tenant's lease will be ending soon and I was hoping to
move back into my own house with that lease
ending because I lost my job and it's really hard to find a
place to live if you don't have a job. And I
discovered under the current city laws that if
I didn't provide an eviction notice within
the very first year, I had no way to
legally move back into my own dwelling.
I can move a family member back into the laws of the City of
Portland, but I, myself, the
landlord, can't move in. Fortunately
I discovered this before the year's lease was up,
but had I had any more -- I don't have a
partner and I don't have family to
move in, so
I ask that law be reconsidered
and aligned with Oregon
state law, if the landlord has
a qualifying need to move back in, they can do it. But Portland
doesn't align with that law. But
they didn't realize I was in that year scenario so I was safe,
but this really alarms know because I only have
one home and if this situation were to happen again,
like I would be homeless, basically, even if my
tenant's lease had ended. So I'm just
asking if considerations can be given for people who only have
one home, you know, and if they can't move
back into their own home like
that, that's really stressful for me, and like
the previous caller, it
makes me reconsider even renting
my home out if I need to move back in
and get roommates to have a place
to live. I'm not crazy
wealthy. I can't afford to have a lawyer
to call with all these tricky issues. It's
really stressful.
I'm sure if I had multiple properties it wouldn't be a big
deal because I would have more to land on, but
when you're a small-time person, only have one
thing, it becomes an increasing barrier to
want to rent to folks. So I just wish people would
consider, what do you do if you're a single person, you don't
have family or other people that can rely on, you only
have one property. So that's
my testimony.
>> CHRISTINA: Thank you,
Olivia. Any questions for Olivia?
Yes, Vivien. >> VIVIEN: Olivia, I understand
that you don't have a lot of financial resources
to hire a landlord attorney,
but did you speak to any
attorneys or any other person for legal advice
related to your own desire to move back into your home?
Olivia: I spoke to the City of Portland and they
talked about the difference between Oregon law and the City of Portland
law and if I was outside the city, my
house was outside the City of Portland, I could move in
with that qualifying reason, but because it was within
the City of Portland,
according to the City of Portland laws, I would have to move past
that year limit, and yeah, you can get a lawyer and check
it out, but here's the law as it is.
>> VIVIEN: Okay. Thank you.
>> CHRISTINA: Any other questions for Olivia?
All right. Thank
you, Olivia. Appreciate your
testimony. The next up, Esa Dean.
>>
ISA: Landlord, 19 years in the City of
Portland, I just have properties,
I live in a part of one of the
properties and I left my
unit vacant about a year and a half because
the rules in the City of Portland became too
scary, the
tenants were becoming
encouraged to have a litigious
nature, became too
scary. I'm converting one of
my properties into a
long-term rental. I hired a manager
to deal with the other properties because I can't deal with
it. I've seen many people, other than
small landlords than me selling their properties
because they can't handle being a landlord in
the City of Portland because the
laws are confusing
and hard to follow.
And then the environment in the
City of Portland is if landlords are the
cause of houselessness, as if
landlords are just money-grubbing,
hand-over-fist -- the evil of the world that we
live in, and it's
really confusing to me
that the city would create such a hostile environment for
being a landlord, that they would make
decisions that would reduce the number of rental properties
in the city. It's going to be
sold to be a privately
owned and occupied dwelling unit. And then
I feel confused why the city isn't
purchasing its own public
housing. I feel
confused about other options for
houselessness. I don't understand why
there's this kind of connection between landlords and people not --
you know, to afford
housing as if that's the only reason why
there's an explosion of people
living outside. I would
like public policy to be more targeted
to landlords who are the problem
and the larger institutions. I feel disgusted
with the City of Portland, giving away
property to developers with pseudo
low-income housing departments that are ineffectual
and create ridiculously-priced
units that are super fancy and so
on. Yeah. I just feel like
it's really frustrating and
scary to be a good landlord in the
City of Portland. I don't feel supported. >> CHRISTINA:
Thank you, Isa. Appreciate your
time and comments. Does anybody have any questions for Isa?
Okay. Thank you, Isa. I'm going to go ahead and
call on the next three folks. If you're present,
please raise your hand.
Ron Schmidt.
Emily Zack, and
Debra
Romeroian. Go ahead and do those one more
time. Ron
Schmidt, Emily Zak,
and Debra
Romeroian.
Next we have Kymberly
Ruhu, Debra Stewart, and
Daniel Hayes. Please raise your hand if I called
your name.
Kymberlya Ruhu, Debra
Stewart, and Daniel
Hayes.
Olia
Gorlakina,
Iona River, and Scott Cohen.
If I read your name, please raise
your hand. It
looks like -- somebody raised their
hand. Olia, would you please go ahead
and give your public
testimony. >> Think. My name
is Olia, for social
services within the communities of
Oregon and really
hard, I can totally relate to
all this small owners of
properties because
lately with the new
apartments being built, so many
people are getting vouchers, unfortunately, Ian isn't here
today, but the sad thing is, the limit for
public assistance for housing for
assistance fell to -- really bad. It
got lower than last year
somehow and for apartments very much and I've been on
the wait-list with people for four and
five months with emergency housing vouchers and they are
not able to afford
even one-bedroom apartments sometime in the areas
they need to live in the safe places where they can find
something or there's another part where
there's commercial big apartments, find
any small reason to not lend to people with
vouchers, which would just be -- this little small
amount of time to request documents from advocates and
within two hours, even less, because we
don't have a lot of clients, we reach out as far
as we can, but sometimes I can only answer next
day within two hours with -- who rent that apartment to someone else
and say, hey, you have your time, but you
didn't comply with our request and now you have to
look for something else and lately, it has been a
thing with some apartments where they will send
a denial to a person directly without including an
advocate and they will not include the
appeal policy at all and how can a person
appeal their denial and they would just ignore any calls
and messages for a while until that apartment is rented
out, they will not put it on hold,
they won't say that they had
maybe a family emergency or medical
appointment or went on vacation for a week.
And I work with a lot of Ukrainian families
who just came here and I understand that
most of them have families here, relatives,
that's why they came to Portland or to
this area, but sadly, to get an apartment, you
have to either have a job
or you will be able to care for this apartment in
the future, a rent subsidy or you need
to find someone's who has three times
the rent to sign with you
as a cosigner and a lot of things aren't
possible and I know that a lot of people know these problems but
I want to bring them up again. Thank you. >> CHRISTINA: Thank
you, Olia. Does anybody have any questions for
Olia? Okay. Appreciate your time.
Next three folks that are signed up, please
raise your hand when you hear
your name, Lauren
evert,
Molly, and
Kohrt. All right.
Lauren, do you want to go to give
your public
testimony? >> MOLLY: Did you
say Molly?
>> CHRISTINA: I said Lauren. >> LAUREN:
It took a while. My
name is Lauren Everett, and I've been a renter the
last 20 years, eight years in Portland, and a
volunteer organizer and advocate with the Portland
united, so I've heard stories from hundreds of other
renters over the years, and I'm not
exaggerating. Over the time I've lived
here, I've seen slow but
steady progress that protects renters
but it has slowed down, culminating
in the city council's
deeply disappointing vote to deal with the fair ordinance.
So instead of rolling back protections, we need the
Housing Bureau and council to address harassment and
the likelihood of 15% rent increase happen next
year, which is a very
serious for a lot of people. In addition to the need for
more rent protection, we experience problems enforcing
the rights we have, without a bureau
set up to investigate complaints, they
compete for capacity, and fend for themselves in situations where
they're at a major disadvantage
in terms of power and what's at stake. This causes
unimaginable stress and uncertainty that permeates
all aspects of one's
life. We've received 60 to 70 requests last
month, compared to 80 calls in February,
half of which were from landlords, if I recall. So
we're all volunteers with full-time jobs,
yet we find ourselves playing a significant role in
the city's tenant network. I would like to
think the government is invested
in supporting me and my fellow co-workers.
We are half the city's residents and
this connects directly to our
homelessness crisis, I've studied homelessness. The
best way to do this is to take a
proactive approach, tenant education, and
this means education of both landlords and tenants,
adding money to the rental services and
and expanding the scope, it also
means defending policies that protect renters, even
if that means hiring another attorney for
the Rental Services Commission for other expanding
offices and creates extra work for landlords is not
a legitimate reason to eliminate it.
Regulatory policies are in all industries, ultimately, the Rental
Services Commission can play a role here by
educating landlords and helping a lot with
resolving conflicts with the tenants. I could talk for
hours about being a renter and the problems I've heard, but
we need our government to play a more
active role. Thank you. >> CHRISTINA: Thank
you, Lauren. Does anybody have any
questions for Lauren? Okay. Next
up, we have
Molly. >> MOLLY: I'm
Molly Hogan, and
I'm the director are working to
ensure that we have housing options that meet the real
needs of the people in our region. So thank you for your
time tonight to talk about concerns in the rental market in
Portland. And we know that we need a very
clear, strategic plan that
involves implementing many different policies to address our housing
crisis, but I want to touch on a few
points tonight. The first ones I want to touch on
are two amendments that were passed by our city council
last week,
first, the
rollback of public protections, struck a
dangerous precedence that landlords
can threaten the city with
a lawsuit and get policy changed
in their favor. Another amendment that was approved by
the city council last week had to do
with a project in northeast -- the splash
project, and it was to reduce the number of
affordable units in their
project that was only
5% of the project. And included in the
housing project, the city requires
20%. The reason this was allowed, the project was
to build four more buildings from the land
parcel. However, if we're allowing a project to go from 44
affordable units to 11, just 11 units, that is not going to
help us address our housing crisis now.
We have no idea when four more buildings would be built in our
city. We know it takes so much time. So just
to have the original proposal, proposed
44 units and the city units passed them to have just 11
in the building now. So
I offer that this commission, if you
all want to increase affordable rent and
access to affordable rent, that you
put pressure on the city council
to ensure that the
inclusionary housing council is meeting its mission, and the mission is to
increase the number of affordable units in our
city. Further, that
same project did
have a rent of $1,119 a month for a one bedroom
of the affordable units. This is still
putting a person making $15 an hour incredibly
rent burdened, paying 47% of
their income on housing. And that brings me to
my last point, which I don't think I have time for,
which is the recently
application housing screening minimum requirement, when a unit is more
affordable, the tenants is required to prove
2.5 times the rent amount versus the more
expensive, a tenant only has to approve two times
the rent, which puts the
burden, again, on people with less money.
And I know that's time. Thank you for all
you do. >> CHRISTINA: Thanks,
Molly. Does anybody have any questions for Molly?
All right. Before we take a five-minute break,
I'll call the next three individuals who signed up for public testimony so
we can get you all situated in the right virtual
place before we take a quick break. If
you hear your name, raise your hand. John
Evans. Lavinia
Jackson. And John Mitchell. Any of
you in attendance and want to give
public testimony, please raise your hand now. And for
everyone, we will see you back
>> CHRISTINA: Hello, everybody, welcome back.
Just making sure we have the RSC
commissioners. >> Recording in
progress. >> CHRISTINA: Okay.
Great. I'm going to call those last three
names one more time and then we'll move on to the next three if
they're not present. They were John Evans,
Lavinia Jackson, and John Mitchell. If any of you are
present, please raise your hand.
Okay. I'm going to go to the next three. If you hear your
name, please raise your Zoom hand.
Anthony foster,
Andres
Oswell, and
Kim
Foster, Andres Oswell, and Kim McCarty.
Anthony, do you want to go first? >> ANTHONY:
Sure. Thanks, everyone. I'm not
going to use video. My camera is weird. Can
you all hear me?
>> CHRISTINA: Yes, we can hear you great.
Anthony: I found out about this meeting
today, I'm a long-time
Portlander, and I'm a social worker, I'm a white man
with a master's degree who was a
[indiscernible] for two years working
for projects, and it is extremely difficult for me to be
a tenant in Portland
and make sure that I can protect my rights and stand up for
my own rights. From the way that
landlords that I've experienced break the
law around screening, to
what it takes to actually
get -- scares me, just the amount of letters I have to
write to make sure that my
shower works is -- is really not
-- and I would love
to see the City of Portland step up and have
an office that is actually able to help with enforcement of
some of the rules that we have that protect our renters,
both at the state and
local levels.
Having such an important piece of our social contract, when
you look at other pieces like employment,
if I have a safety issue in my job,
I can call OSHA. If my boss
decides they don't want to call me, I can call -- and it doesn't
mean, even if that case, that the boss is going to
get a fine, bully is just
going to bully will tell my boss, hey, you have to
tell this person, hey, you have to pay this person or
we'll fine you. It could be a method, just not
just a way to punish landlords for
not knowing the rules. I need there to be something
-- something else. I don't know what else --
what -- the clients that I work
with who are the lower-income population, this is
hard for me. I can only imagine what it is like for
them. I mostly have things together. A lot more
than many Portlanders. And
so this burden is -- it falls a lot
harder on a lot of other people. I'm not, honestly, sure
exactly what this commission does or has the power to do, but
whatever you can do, please, if
there's a way to ask the city to
have the rental service office, you know, have
some kind of enforcement
mechanism, that would be excellent. And thank you so much
for hearing me today. >> CHRISTINA: Thank you. Does
anybody have any
questions?
Okay. Thank you very much. Appreciate your testimony.
Next, Kim
McCarty. >> KIM: My name
is Kim McCarty. Thank you for giving me this
time this evening. I'm from the community of
-- the Executive Director, my pronouns are
she-her, and I just want
to let you know that for rents
in Portland, the circumstances couldn't be more
dire. We answer the calls of the tenants, on a
monthly basis, and most of them
coming from Portland. And at the beginning of
this meeting you pointed out how the Rental Services Commission is
advisory and you don't have any regulatory power. As
you can imagine, there's really no one in the state,
no one in Portland, who has the power to really look
out for the rights of tenants, and that is really
the crux of the problem. Our members would
say we need more accountability.
We need more regulation. So what do I
mean by that? We don't have all the solutions, of
course, right now. But we
need you as an advisory committee
to be asking and demanding more. We want to see something
like a tenants' board. We want to be acknowledged
that we're still in the midst of a public
health emergency, still missing
work, still experiencing health
and economic impacts that are
helping them not pay rent. We
need universal information that is required from landlords
and tenants so they understand their rights.
We need for renters to have less
barriers in some of their
applications and spaces and
apartments. When faced with an
eviction and completely
disadvantaged, need legal counsel and it's
not a right and not
affordable. At times, policies
in Portland, relocation assistance is very helpful,
but it does not prevent
eviction, and it's something that's a
growing problem,
especially for Black and Indigenous communities, people who don't speak English
as a first language, refugee
communities, that needs to be recognized and we need to do something about
it. We've all heard that the cost of housing is
unaffordable and has been unaffordable for
decades, especially for our low-income tenants,
but it's even at a scary
level right now where you think about inflation, where we
might see rents going up by 15%.
I want to do everything in its power to
retain the emergency provisions that the state offered that help
our agencies to get people assistance before they're
evicted. Those are going away in September, so we urge
the city to do everything in its
power to enact its own protections.
Lastly, our -- we
endorse the PTU
anti-harassment ordinance and we know that harassment
is one of the elements that is driving the state of
homelessness. Thank you for your time. >> CHRISTINA: Thank
you, Kim. Does anybody have
any questions for Kim?
Okay. We're going to go ahead and call the next three names.
If you hear your name, please raise your
hand. Lisa
drening, Sheryl
Santiago, and
and
XCXD. All right.
Lisa, if you are ready to go,
please go ahead and provide your
testimony.
Lisa? Let's go
to Cheryl Santiago.
>> CHERYL: Good evening. My name is Cheryl
Santiago. I have been in
real estate for approximately 25 years. Both
as a licensed
Realtor, a landlord, and
a Portland Senate for some time. I've gotten to see
some ugly side of being a
tenant, living in an apartment
that by all
rights was hazardous
to my health. Reached out
to the City of Portland for assistance and the
situation I was in, the
apartment, toxic mold and hantavirus and in
the end, I had to hire an attorney to
sue. So I do have experience being a tenant.
But now I'm on the other side of that
coin. I am a
landlord. I have a fourplex
currently, 100% vacant. As a matter of fact, I have
it boarded up because homeless people are trying to break
in, set it on
fire, spray paint,
which the city is
-- sending me notes that they
will fine me about the copious amounts
of spray paint going up on my building. Right
now, I'm choosing not to
rent nor continue the renovation. I'm coming
off a four-year strain of no
payments, zero dollars, from tenants. At the start
of COVID, I began legal
battles to get tenants out. And I have
to tell you, I don't know a landlord, a small
landlord like myself that wants to just kick people out.
We don't want to kick people out. As a matter of fact,
my rents were extremely low.
Two bedroom, $800. If you had a
hardship, I would waive them. But during COVID,
I applied to the city for
funding. I received zero.
I applied for $56,000 in block
grants. I endured over
$12,000 in attorney fees just trying
to evict people that were living off me
for free while I had to work extra
hard. I had to sell my possessions just
to stay afloat, still pay my
mortgage, still pay the
water for people. At one point I had eight to ten
people living in a one
bedroom apartment and I had to continue paying
the utilities. I have about
$80,000 in damages for my
property right now that I can't afford to --
I can't afford to fix
it. I have to work and look for
second employment just so that I can save
up to maybe one day
fix it. And I don't think
I would ever, ever
want to lower my
standards -- my standards will never be low again. I will
always, from this point forward, if I'm in the Portland
rental market, will look at the most possible amount of money
that I can get for my
property because at this point, I'm
almost [indiscernible] supporting others
in this. It has been a hardship for my
family. It's been stressful. Just
on my mental health. It has been
stressful. >> CHRISTINA: Cheryl, I'm going to stop you,
because you're at time. Thank you for your testimony. Does
anybody have any questions for Cheryl?
Vivien, go ahead. >> VIVIEN: Cheryl, I'm sorry to
hear about your building. Where in
Portland is that located? >> CHERYL:
In north Portland. >> VIVIEN: Okay. And how long has
it been since you have not been renting
to anybody? >> CHERYL: We just
were able to evict the
last tenants three
months ago and that was the group of people in
the one-bedroom. >> VIVIEN: And I
heard you testify, it seems like you didn't get any
money from the Landlord Compensation
Fund. Did any of your tenants apply with
ORAP or
Gastron [phonetic]?
>> CHERYL: They refused. >> VIVIEN:
They refused to apply? >> CHERYL: They refused
to cooperate or apply. >> VIVIEN: Thank you for
answering my questions. >> CHRISTINA: Any other questions
for Cheryl? Thank you,
Cheryl. We have Lisa, it looks like,
who is signed up for public
testimony. >> LISA: I'm
Lisa Drennen, I'm
a long time renter of Portland,
little sister foundation, we rescue
families from human trafficking and
I'm the founder of the broiler house,
something off the ground. I have witnessed
over the last 30 years
gentrification at a ridiculous rate, from the early
'80s to now, I
personally my family had two properties that were owned here in
Portland, one is downtown and
one nearby, that were
multifamily apartment buildings, original construction. So,
yes, they needed some work. However,
the city allowed a ridiculous amount
of crime, especially at the one located
downtown, to present itself -- I mean, like police
wouldn't do anything, the inspectors had
been paid off for a couple of decades. The
housing -- the property management company allowed the
deterioration of the building almost to
the point of it being shut
down, condemned.
Immediately after that, immediately after that, the
city bought it. So
that tells me a lot. That
not only was my inheritance, but it was the location
I planned to house the families that I
rescue with my organization and provide them
peer support, being a survivor
of child
trafficking, sexual predators,
in our city, I've been
watching across Grumman, northeast
Portland, and I want to know when the city is going to
stop. There are a lot of people homeless now.
I personally am in a building run by IPM
Management, my rent went up when I lost my job. It
didn't go down. It went up. And I'm in a fair
market house. A fair market,
one-bedroom apartment. During COVID, I lost
my job two times. Neither
time was my rent adjusted for my income, at
all. I almost lost my house. I
mean, I just barely made it by. I have
been homeless. I serve --
I work for northwest at the
market-free shelter, so I serve the homeless, every single
day. We need to have a lot more
low-barrier housing. We need to -- we
need to do something. If our city
doesn't start caring about its people, the people aren't going to care about
it. So I
-- being a native Portlandian, I
love this city. My children are
here. My grandchildren are here. My grandmother was born here.
And the deterioration of this city is sad. It's sad.
And it's something that our local
government allowed, yet complains about. And I
would like to see change, for
the sake of all of us.
>> CHRISTINA: Thank you, Lisa.
You've reached your time. Appreciate your comment.
Does anybody have any questions for Lisa? Okay.
Thank you. I'm going to go ahead and call the last three
people that have signed up for public testimony
and then we'll move into the list of folks who signed up as maybes.
So if you hear your name, raise your hand.
Edith Gillis, Carla
Andrews, and Janine Malone.
Okay. It looks like we have --
who is -- Janine
Malone? Please go ahead. >> So I got
invited to this meeting at the last minute
by someone that works for PTU, an advocate,
because I've been reaching out to her for
the past couple of months. I've been being discriminated against in
so many ways, these
landlords and property management, they're making it
very hard. I'm a single mother, and I have seven
children. One of those seven children is an adult, which
he's 19, so as far as application
fees, I am paying two
application fees, sometimes $100, one time this place charged me
$135 for me and my son
application fees. Most of the time these fees are not returned
to me because we're getting denied for reasons that clearly
are being discriminated because I'm showing proof of
income, I'm showing three years of rental history, I'm showing proof
of two times the rent and everything. I
just recently got an emergency housing voucher
back in February. It is now July. I'm
still getting denied or people are getting picked
over me or approved over me to find
a place. Recently I just
got approved
in June. This person said
they decided they're not moving, so now
they have my money that I had to come up with and
sign a lease. That's another thing. They're
forcing people to put down a deposit or
whatever they call it, within 24 hours or they tell you
they're moving on to the next applicant. So you don't know what
they have to go through to come up with this money in
the next 24 hours. After I
signed the lease and came up with the money in 24 hours,
they are not leaving. So I have to get
a referral because
I'm suing and they have my money and they're not moving. I'm
dealing with the other property management who doesn't
remove themselves from this landlord business, now,
this other property management, RP 8,
they have denied me clearly, they denied me, then appealed me
and approved me, then denied me again,
but clearly, they're having different
reasons. I'm giving them everything
they're asking for for screening criteria. That's
another thing, something needs to be done about that.
If I have a 680 or a 700
credit score, I'll go get a mortgage myself to buy
a home. If anybody has a 680 or a
700, they're not going to be one to rent. They have
to live safe in a good environment as well as anybody
else. So they have to do something
with the credit scores as far as renting because a high
credit score is somebody that can get a mortgage. A lot of
these things, people are feeling helpless, like
me. I work two jobs, sometimes three, and I'm being
taken away from my home just to provide rent to keep a home
for my kids. Like so many things that are
unfair, reaching out to legal aid, it's
time-sensitive, because you have to wait two or three weeks for someone
to reach out to you while
you have to spend more money, I have an emergency
voucher and there's no way I have not been
approved for a rental space
within seven months.
>> CHRISTINA: Thank you, appreciate that.
It looks like Regina has a question for you,
Jannene. >> REGINA: Thank you for that,
Jannene. Have these management companies given you
information about their appeals
process? >> Yes. >> REGINA: Or a
reason why you were denied and
here's what you can do? >> Yes. Here's the thing.
I've been offered -- I know that is my right as
a tenant to request an appeal, but the landlord
and property management are not giving you a fair
chance as far as giving you an appeal. They have a
short amount of time requesting certain information when they give
it to you. They may give you an answer, I've gotten
an answer of on 30 minutes within an
appeal, you see what I'm saying? Or they don't
call for a week and call and say, we're
still going to deny it. Yeah, I've been dealing with this
housing issue for longer than just February. It's
been over two years with property management, but it's
like people like me, where do I go? Who
do I turn to? How do I have someone
advocate for me? These landlords are clearly
taking advantage. And most of these
housing vouchers don't even cover the rent they're requesting. So
a lot of the housing vouchers, it's almost useless because
they're not reasonable for the housing voucher -- home
for the program. I might not be wording everything right
like I should and I've got a book I could write that
I would have to speak on three minutes, but like I
said, I'm continuously working with someone from
PTU, and I'm just trying to fight this,
because, again, I did have $1500 come up
with the money, and they took me money
and they kept it and
I don't have a place and these landlords
shouldn't be able to do that.
>> REGINA: Thank you for that. >>
You're welcome. >> CHRISTINA: Thank you,
Jannene. We appreciate your
testimony. Next up we have Edith
Gillis. Edith: Can you hear me?
I'm a tenant with
-- where we've had people die because it was against
the lease to have air conditioning. What I'm concerned
about, now, using federal, state, city
and county dollars, I can't use the
video. Thank you. I -- we're having all of our tax
dollars to be helping people and
saying their basic human right
to housing, and yet none of
that money is going to help anyone who is currently
houseless or housing insecure
when they demolish our 70 households.
They said we would be able to stay here until January
2024. And yet
last week some of my neighbors have been told they have
to be out next month. How are they going to find another
place to go? They said when we -- we have to leave here,
we will lose our public housing, we will be
put into section 8. If I was a landlord, I wouldn't want
section 8 with all the hassle, the delay
in getting paid and having all the different
rules. And then we are competing with people who are already on section
8, so they're losing their housing security. We have to wait until
they build the place, get it ready for us
to move in, which could
be several years down the
road, because we don't have enough forest,
everything costs more and in the interim, more
and more people are losing their housing. I'm
a home care worker with the Oregon commission and
I have not been paid most of the time. We're low
pay, but we have to go since September
12th when the federal government required a different way of logging in
our pay and we're not getting paid, and
yet our rent doesn't go down lower pay, and then
when we come back, we are told it will be
60% in the area on median
income. If that is $96,000 a year, I know of no
one in this area that makes
$10,000 gross a year. So we're going to be
competing with people from Seattle
and San Francisco for the rent that
we Portlanders pay taxes on that we will not be
able to afford to live here
and then to be in a multistory building. None
of the people who are currently unhoused
or housing insecured will get that, and it's not safe. We're all
low-incomed and disabled. If there's a
fire, an electrical shortage, if someone is
shooting guns,
poisonous gas, a gas line explosion, an
earthquake, we will not be able to
get out of the building safely. So this
is stacking us up, we lose our public
housing, our section 8, and we'll be in section 18 and
section 17 and no one is able to tell us what
rights, what opportunities we are losing with section 17. We
don't know what section 17 means.
>> CHRISTINA: Thank you, Edith. You've
reached your time. Does anybody have any
questions for Edith?
Yes, Vivien. >> VIVIEN: Can
you repeat the name of the building that you're
in, the complex? Edith:
Home Forward owns the property and manages it.
The complex is peaceful villa
between division and Woodward between 46th and 47th.
It's where we've had people die because it was against
the lease to have air
conditioning. >> VIVIEN: Thank
you. >> CHRISTINA: Thank you,
Edith. So we've completed everybody who was on my
list. I know there's someone else who is in the
attendees that would like to testify, and we'll call just
in a second. Right now what we're going to do, I want to open
up the chat for a few minutes here to let
individuals who are participating by have not
yet signed up for testimony go ahead and put their name in the
chat if they'd like to sign up for testimony and
we'll see how many folks we can get through. So the chat
should be open momentarily, go ahead and put your name in. While
we're doing that, I'm also going to
call out the folks that signed up as maybes and I'll do this
in groups of five. So if you are here,
please raise your hand,
I know Justin Wolf, we're going to promote you to
speaker. Nathan McKibben, if you are here, please
raise your hand. Michelle
Gilla, if you would like to give public
testimony, raise your hand.
Beth
Rosenland, Rhonda
Atkins, and Joseph Subia.
If any of you all are here,
please raise your hand.
Okay. Justin Wolf, why don't you go ahead
and provide public
testimony.
Justin, are you able to provide your testimony?
>> JUSTIN: Yeah. Hello.
Hi, I'm Justin Wolf, I'm a tenant
of a single-a duplex, a
landlord that has three -- less than five properties,
in Marion County.
I've suffered and endured
quite a bit of illegal housing practices and I have barriers
to housing. This is
two-bedroom household with my son, who is
9 years old and myself live. We've been here going on
three years. I had some initial assistance
from the community action agency down here and I've just --
I could go on and on and on. What I'm
saying is, in the area that I'm
in, I was seeking advocacy and I've learned that
I'm actually an advocate for my house
household now, part of the community
Alliance of
Tenants. I work for addiction
treatment facility. I've got some lived experience
and education that puts me there, and I'm an
addiction treatment specialist. I help people. I got disabilities
myself. My son does too.
I've got fair housing
complaint filed due to reasonable
accommodation requests and civil rights
violations and I need to
-- I don't know what to do. I received --
while all this stuff was coming up, I
received a notice to vacate for
one of the qualifying landlord reasons,
but the owner hands
to remodel the unit, and I received
a lot of undue harassment and illegal
housing practices and it -- it
cost me to get straight F's in college where I'm a
student, you know, still going after my degree for
addiction studies, and I've --
I'm a felon from a while ago,
but like I'm also -- I'm a full-time dad. I'm
a full-time student.
I have disabilities. The
father, the single parent effect
in an area where these are
all homes that the landlord
owns, there's -- there's -- what do you call it, they meet
up, they, you know, gossip.
There's a lot of stuff that I
have -- and -- past three
minutes, so I'm starting on a little bit general. I'm
here, I'm still in the dwelling. I've learned
how to get my rent paid
through OERP three months
ahead, I've always been
having struggles like --
you know? As we -- the cost
of living goes up and still
-- got to just maintain without
falling apart, so --
I don't know, just thank you guys
and it feels good to be just somewhere
where I have some space to share a little bit. >> CHRISTINA: Thank
you, Justin. We appreciate you testifying. Does
anybody have any questions for Justin?
Okay. Thanks, Justin.
I'm going to go ahead and call the next group of five names.
If you're present, please raise your hand.
Sico Dali,
Estelle Golden,
Deanna Johnson, Jonathan
Buhler, and Cheryl
Lincoln. Okay.
Estelle, I see your hand
raised.
And Estelle, go ahead and please
provide your testimony when you're
ready.
Hi, Estelle. Go ahead.
You're on mute,
Estelle. Estelle: Can you hear me
now? I forgot I had signed up. I am currently a
landlord, but I've been a tenant in the past and
I'm very empathetic to a lot of the situations I'm hearing
from the renters and
I have friends who are renters and the stories
are unbelievable and especially me, small landlords that really
do try to follow all the rules, and speaking for
me, I've taken all the classes, read all the rules, I always try
to go by the book. But my issue has
just been -- no matter how often I read the
rules, especially around security deposits and
vacancies and a lot of things like that, I can
never seem to fully understand them. I've taken lots of classes and
I ask questions in the classes a lot of times what I hear
from the attorneys is, well, it's not
really clear. We're
going to have to find out once there's a lawsuit and we'll
know in the future. Nobody knows
what the outcome is because sometimes it's conflicting rules. And
I have felt for a long time that the
risk-reward proposition for small
landlords like me, I have
just a small
duplex, making a small mistake, even if I try to do
everything right, the cost for that is so high, and I've
decided to exit the market and my property is on the
market. I know other people are considering doing the same thing.
So I just wanted to put that out there. And I
wish I didn't have to, but I really feel like I
do need to do that. >> CHRISTINA: Thank you, Estelle. Does
anybody have any questions for Estelle?
Okay. Let me see.
Vivien, go ahead. >> VIVIEN:
Estelle, have you been sued by a tenant?
Estelle: No, never. >> VIVIEN: That's my only question.
Thank you. Estelle: Thank
you. >> CHRISTINA: All right. We're going to call
a bunch of more names now. So if you hear your name, please
raise your hand. If you're interested
in providing public testimony.
Andres Oswill,
Jess D, Laurie
Lorton, Susan Anderson,
Joanne McNamara,
Molly Mcgrew, Michael
Havlik, Michael
H., Connie Mack,
and Amanda Rhodes. If any of
those folks are present and interested in giving public testimony,
please raise your hand.
Okay. I'm going to move
on. Unless I see
anybody raise their hand. I don't think I
did. Okay. Looks like Michael
Havlik has raised his hand, and
Andres. If you want to go ahead
and promote them. >> TAWNYA: I've got
Andres going, Christina, if you want to start
with him. >> CHRISTINA: Great. Andres,
please provide your testimony.
Andres: I use he-they
pronouns. I became a
landlord for a single family home in southeast Portland
and I'm here to share what my experience has been as a
housing provider. While I support
a number of additional efforts for relief, my goal
today is to share what my experience has been
like sharing housing. We listed
on Zillow, and holding an open
house, we were instantly
bombarded with messages from renters wanting to renter
our place, we went through the open
house, time stamped the applications, a
multigenerational household making more than just times the two times
the rent amount in income. They have never missed
a rent payment or paid late and we just
renewed them for another year's
lease. We received offers to pay more than rent
if we accepted their application. In
the year since we
began renting, we've seen
rents increase 12% or more. I know I have
an easier time with the screening tools
that said, the amount and
time, given proper education, seemed reasonable. I know my
experience can't be generalized to multihousing
family provider, but I entered being a
landlord with the understanding that I was becoming
responsible with the
work involved to provide home, it's not a
retirement account, it's having where a family lives, the
humanness where the work requires my responsibility as a
housing provider. I take away at least a year
in is that while it takes some of
my time and beyond a doubt, it is an
extreme privilege and the current market
is extremely generous to property owners
with routine repairs
and no major improvements, the same home
can now bring in hundreds of dollars a month. I've
done nothing to earn that income, and
now effectively below market rent just one year in. I wanted
to make sure the commission heard this story
along with some more stories that I know you hear from
other housing providers.
I just provide context for your conversation.
Thank you. >> CHRISTINA: Thank you,
Andres. Does anybody have any questions for
Andres? >> CHRISTIAN: I don't have any specific questions, but I do
want to just say it's good to hear
from you,
Andres. I'm glad to hear from you, and it was
a pleasure working with you previously.
Andres: Absolutely. I enjoyed working with you, and it's
nice to see you all again.
>> CHRISTINA: Thank you. Michael
Havlik. I want to say, it's nice to say
Andres as well. I worked with him for a long time and
it's good to see he's having a good experience. I
would encourage the
RSC to study more between the
nexus and the confusing and the loss of rental property in
Portland. The loss of rental property is
ongoing since the study by
northwest was completed and I continue to hear
from housing providers that they love the current
renters, want to stay in the business until the current
renter leaves, but when they do, they're going to put
their property up for sale, so I'm afraid there's going to be
a long tail of lost housing for those concerned about
the cost of regulations. They need to hire attorneys
and just the uncertainty that they're
not completely complying with everything because
there it's confusing so I want to put that thought in
your mind and hope before you adopt any more regulations
that you really do understand the nature of the loss of
housing and if you consider, you know, three and
four-bedroom houses, if we lost 6,000 of
those in the Portland metro area, that's
18,000 bedrooms no longer available to rent and I know
the loss has gone beyond that since the study was done.
So I just think it's
good comparative, it's understood better, and I
think that the RSC has probably help with reporting
on this and provide more context with what's in
the rental market. And before my voice goes away, I
thank you for your time. >> CHRISTINA: Thank you, Michael.
Does anybody have any questions for Michael?
Okay.
I'm going to go ahead and call the next batch of
folks who may be interested in providing public
testimony. If I call your name, please raise your
hand. Jessica Brown, Mary
Vogel, Siren Skinner,
I'm sorry, Amy
Oberhotzer, Jennifer Hanson,
Keith Von
Trager, Michelle
Specki,
Sevecech, Nick
Nick lass, sue
Scott, and Otto
Younger. All right. Siren,
why don't you go ahead, please, and provide your
testimony. Siren: That's me.
Someone else was using my account,
I'm Christian Rosen Krantz. Yeah,
tenant, I'm for all the different tenant
laws. I think it's amazing what Portland has done
with all the tenant laws. Can't think of
anything other than a few examples of some landlords that
didn't know how to navigate them. There should be
more training or more resources available for them. I think
when I look up outside
Multnomah County, I see people without
relocation services or 90 days for eviction
or different bans on different types of,
you know, no-cause evictions. I'm just happy
with what we have. I don't want to take up any
more time than that other to say I'm
very pleased and I really hope there's
no whittling away of tenants' rights
that are specific to this wonderful county.
I just feel really good about living here and it's helped me
out a lot because there are some times when I feel like
my rights would have been trampled on
and a lot of landlords would have chosen
not to provide the best ability they had provided to me due to
the law. Thanks.
>> CHRISTINA: Thank you. Does anybody have any questions?
All right. Thank you very much.
Appreciate your testimony. Next up,
we have Jessica
Brown. >> JESSICA: Hi there, thank you for having me.
My name is Jessica, my pronouns are
she-her-hers. I'm a mom. I'm a renter,
I'm sorry I'm not on camera, but I'm nursing my
baby, because timing is always like that. My partner
and I applied for OERAP because
we went from a two-income
home to a one-income home during the height of the
pandemic, which was difficult during a pregnancy.
My landlord received
an overpayment of $20,000,
double and triple payments including the rent we paid, that
there's no accountability for landlords
that receive overpayment and our landlord served us
with a nonrenew notice. Now
my partner and I are being
forced into a housing market that we can't
qualify for. It's extremely difficult for me to
feel an ounce of sympathy for
landlords, mom and pop, because it was
a mom and pop
that did this to us.
And someone who owns more than one
house is always better than one who owns
none. Thank you. >> CHRISTINA: Thank you.
Does anybody have questions for Jessica? All right.
I'm going to call the next batch of folks.
This is going to be the end of --
maybe, maybe list.
We have
Coroline Craft, if you hear your name,
raise your hand. Cory
PinkHart, Jessica get
mire, Gary Burns,
Tim Walters, Michelle
or
Chele Ryanchean,
and Andrea
Knight. >> Thigh, it's
-- hi, it's T. >> I
think Jennifer just testified.
Thanks. I'm sorry, no, that was Jennifer
Brown. I'm sorry. >> TAWNYA:
Hanson, yeah. >> CHRISTINA: So it
looks like -- I saw that -- well, Jennifer,
why don't you go ahead.
Jennifer, are you able to give your testimony?
All right. We'll come back to
-- there she is. Hi,
Jennifer, are you ready to give your testimony?
All right. We'll come back to
Jennifer. Andrea
Knight. >> ANDREA: Hi,
I'm Andrea Knight, working as a
hotline specialist on the [indiscernible] hotline, and
I only heard about this at the end of my
workday, so just a little bit before
it started. Which is probably
obvious, since I'm dead last. But I would
like to point out that
I'm hearing from a lot of
renters on a regular basis
about evictions in
particular. There have been a lot of
evictions that have been going through and a lot of
people are facing homelessness because of
them. For a
wide variety of reasons. I would
also like to mention that
I would like to see
maybe a commission or an
office or panel or something
where landlords can be held accountable for
upholding their duties,
like, for example, maintaining
rental unit in a habitable condition.
That would be
nice. Sorry, I have a
tendency to get a little nervous in front of humans. One
thing I would like to
underline is that
having access to, say,
legal counsel for going through legal eviction would also be extremely
beneficial for those who are facing it. And if there is
a way that we can increase that availability
somehow, that would be
lovely. Thank you.
>> CHRISTINA: Thank you. Does anybody have any follow-up
questions?
Okay. Thank you for your testimony. And
last, but not least, we
have Jennifer Hansen.
Jennifer, are you interested in unmuting yourself
and providing your testimony? >> KRISTINA: Jennifer put a
note in the chat that she may need some
help with that. >> CHRISTINA: Let me
see if I can do
that.
Jennifer, it doesn't look like we can unmute on our end. We can
just ask you to unmute yourself.
>> VIVIEN: It looks like she's checking on that
option from the
Zoom support.
>> CHRISTINA: Well, Jennifer, while you are trying to figure
that out, it looks like we have
one last person to speak, which is
Nola, we're going to go ahead and promote Nola
and have them
speak. And Nola, go ahead
and please provide your testimony, whenever you're
ready. Nola:
I'm Nola Chaffee, and this
is my second time I'm going through a
no-cause eviction because my landlord wants to
renovate the apartment. The first was
in Multnomah County in 2019 and
my landlord said that apartment would not be
humanly habitable. My rent when
I left there was $1,075 and that was more almost
1,000 square feet for a two-floor
apartment. And when he renovated
it, he charged $1795 a month
for rent. So I believe
that landlords are really only supposed to
charge 10% increase, so I do
believe we need to have more of a rent
registration system here in Portland and
in the outlying counties
similar to New York City because obviously landlords are
taking advantage of the situation and now here I am, three
years later, and my
landlord here in Milwaukie
sold the building for $1.2 million of
a sixplex here and we paid our rent on
June 1st and on June 2nd the landlord sent out the
90-day notices. Now,
here in Milwaukie we don't have the same
protections as in Multnomah County. I did receive,
when I was evicted in my
previous home, over $3,000 to relocate, but now I'm
being given one month's rent and I have a very good
rent, so that's not very much
money to go out there and -- hello, can you
hear me? Okay.
Secondly, we're talking here,
talked about the criteria standards
in these various buildings which range
widely, and some of them are extreme. I do think
that if you're going to make recommendations,
there would need to be criteria
standards created so that
every renter knows what
they're going towards. Buildings have
wild variations in what they will or won't accept for income.
Also, with regards to the COVID experience, I am
personally unemployed and have gone through patches of unemployment as a
senior, and so I'm very scared about the fact that I
may not be able to get a place in September
when I'm going to be evicted. I am a
tenant who has paid my rent in full in both of these places.
The first place for 11 years. This place for three
years. I did not -- I'm not in
arrears. I never was in arrears. And yet I'm still being
evicted. So the system is not working for tenants.
I hear all the landlords complaining
about the tenants who don't pay, but I'm a
tenant who pays. I'm over 60 years old
and I happen to be unemployed right now and I don't really
see where I can go. Thank you for hearing
this. I have a lot more to say, actually, so
I may send something in writing.
>> CHRISTINA: Thank you, Nola. We appreciate
that. Please do send something in writing if you'd
like. Does anybody have any questions for
Nola? Okay. Jennifer, are you able to have audio?
Doesn't look like it. All right. Jennifer,
if you want to follow up with me, I'll put my
name in the chat. Okay. No
audio. You can provide me your written testimony.
Sorry, I know that's probably not what you wanted to
do. But I will make sure the commissioners receive
it. All right. Well, that's everybody we have
to testify. We actually got everybody who wanted to
speak was able to speak. I'm thrilled about that. So thank you
so much, everybody, for coming and sharing your
stories. I know that I can speak on behalf of the RSC and
say that we really appreciate everybody showing up tonight and
sharing your experiences. And thank you, RSC
members, for joining and hearing everyone's perspectives, and
we will see you all next month, and members of the
public are always welcome to come to the RSC meetings
on the third Tuesday of the
month, usually the public testimony begins at 4:15
and we have 30 minutes set aside for it.
Okay. Thank you, everybody.