As your current President, I want to provide you with insight into one of my recent actions. As you know, I was appointed to Mayor Wheeler’s Residential Services Commission in November. In February, however, I chose to resign. I would like to share with you my reasoning. My hope is this may motivate you and other members to rally into a concentrated effort to fight the new heavy-handed, un-fair and self-defeating policies the mayor and other politicians in our state are now adopting.

Landlords are stunned that the government would interfere with contractual clauses that allow for the simple termination of an agreement. They are outraged that their income could be arbitrarily capped with no regard to the free market, (no matter how low they’ve been voluntarily kept for years past). They are flabbergasted to learn they must pay thousands of dollars for Tenant relocations.

The City of Portland enacted its Renter Protection ordinance in February 2016, as a temporary emergency measure to address the city’s housing crisis. When they did this, they decided to leave exempted any owner with only one Portland rental unit from being affected. As this all occurred, there was a lot of discussion, but not an uproar. A lawsuit was filed against the city, however it lost in court.

Watching all of the New Year’s Eve celebrations around the world on TV this month made me reflect on two things:
First, that the optimism of a new year is a world wide
celebration with no social, political, or religious boundaries, limitations or qualifications. It’s truly a globally unifying event!
Secondly, I realized that I’m home watching TV on that night when the rest of the world is out having a great time. Ugh.

It all seems normal, but there is a new normal emerging. To know if you are participating in today’s real-world rental market, here are a few test questions: