Mayor Mark Dion slammed his gavel down during the Portland City Council’s workshop on rent control Monday night, but the meeting wasn’t over – he was calling it to order amid a heated exchange between city officials about enforcement efforts.

Councilor Wes Pelletier and the city’s director of permitting and inspections, Jessica Hanscombe, clashed over whether staff has effectively enforced the city’s rent control ordinance. They went back and forth about a specific case Pelletier said was a violation the city had let slide. Hanscombe said there was no violation.

Pelletier argued that available public information proved that violation.

“That information is publicly available. … I would like the staff that the city pays to be seeking out this information,” Pelletier said. “I just think that there is a lack of effort … this is a staff issue.”

“My staff is pretty amazing,” Hanscombe said.

“Fantastic,” Pelletier said.

The exchange was the culmination of an animated meeting in which the council heard presentations from two tenants unions arguing that city staff has failed to enforce the rent control ordinance that went into effect in January 2021 after being passed by citizen referendum in 2020.

Hanscombe also presented to the council, arguing that her department is doing all it can to enforce the ordinance.

City councilors were critical of staff and agreed that the ordinance has not been appropriately enforced.

The council ultimately decided to send the ordinance to the Housing and Economic Development Committee, chaired by Councilor Pious Ali, to consider if changes could be made to strengthen enforcement.

“The ordinance is actually being followed by the majority of people,” Hanscombe said during her presentation to the council.

TENANT CONCERNS

Bradley Davis, a founding member of the Portland Tenants Union who said he was forced to leave his apartment after complaining to the city about his landlords raising rent last year, kicked off the meeting with a presentation laying out what he said are failures on the city’s part to uphold the ordinance.

Davis said city staff has shown a pattern of interpreting the rent control ordinance “almost exclusively to the benefit of the landlord.”

He gave examples uncovered by the tenants union. One unit, he said, was listed for rent with a 141% increase. Another landlord was allowed to amend the base rent for a registered unit to facilitate a rent increase, he said. He said both units were found by the city to be compliant with the ordinance when he followed up about them.

“There seems to be no intent or process in place to prevent violations before they occur and no fines for violations when they are found,” Davis said.

Hanscombe said during her presentation that the rent control ordinance doesn’t lay out a mechanism for fining landlords for violations. She said the only way to penalize landlords is by taking them to court. The city has taken nine landlords to court since the ordinance went into effect, city spokesperson Jessica Grondin said.

During her presentation, Hanscombe said her office receives about 100 complaints against landlords per month.

COUNCIL ACTION

Councilors expressed frustration during the meeting Monday over why the rent control ordinance has not been more strongly enforced.

“Our job is to figure out how to make landlords accountable,” Councilor Regina Phillips said. “We are not helping the tenants; we have tons of people here who are tenants of the city who are in the same situation and we are not being fair to them.”

Ali said: “If someone is driving and they go through a red light over and over … I think some of the punitive measures the court might take is possibly suspending their driver’s license because they are a habitual offender.”

Councilors discussed how the city might bring more landlords to court and potentially change the language of the ordinance to mandate stronger enforcement.

Councilor Kate Sykes said she would be happy to bring ordinance changes to voters again if it meant rent control could be better enforced sooner.

“I think we need to be looking at some aggressiveness. I don’t care about avoiding risk, I care about calculating risk,” said Pelletier, urging the city to bring more landlords to court. “I think right now we are really, really erring on the side of making sure we don’t have a rich lawyer on the other side.”

When councilors asked Hanscombe about the lack of publicly available data on the rental history of units in the city, she said it was an IT issue and had nothing to do with her department. Ali requested that the Information Technology department be present at the next meeting.

As things wound down, the mayor spoke about assuming the best of staff.

“I can’t align myself with this wave of indictment that the department has somehow tried to block enforcement of this ordinance,” Dion said. “There were some valid points brought up tonight and they can’t be dismissed. I think there is merit to both sides of the question that need to be addressed.”