28-03-2025
A new Portland tenants union wants to help monitor for rent control violations
Mar. 28—A new tenants union in Portland is promising to do more to fight rent control violations at the same time that the city has increased staffing dedicated to enforcing the new rules.
The Portland Tenants Union, formed at the end of last year, aims to represent all renters in the city and monitor violations of the rent control ordinance.
"Our broader goal is to try and push the city to be more preventative and punitive in their enforcement of this law because these violations have had monumental financial impacts on tenants," said Bradley Davis, who is a member of the union's steering committee and won a rent control complaint against his landlord last year.
Portland's rent control ordinance was first approved by voters in November 2020 and limits annual rent increases to 70% of the Boston-area Consumer Price Index, a measure of inflation. Landlords can go to the rent board to seek additional increases for major upgrades but must keep annual increases to 10% or less. Buildings with four or fewer units where the landlord lives on site are exempt.
The ordinance sought to stabilize rents that rose drastically during the COVID-19 pandemic, decreasing affordability for many residents.
According to data from Zillow, which tracks real estate trends nationally, the average monthly rent in Portland has continued to rise sharply, reaching $2,162 last month, up from $1,546 in February 2020.
In the first few years rent control was in effect, hundreds of complaints were filed and dozens of violations were reported but no landlords were fined.
The idea of the new union, Davis said, is that it can help tenants report violations and monitor compliance by analyzing public data. He and other leaders envision the union to be something of a watchdog group.
"We know violations are happening and we don't want tenants to have to put their own name and housing on the line to speak out against these things," he said.
Meanwhile, the city has stepped up its enforcement efforts over the past year.
At the beginning of 2024, the city hired three full-time employees to staff its new rent control division and is now able to do proactive enforcement, said Jessica Hanscombe, director of permitting and inspections for the city.
Under the new division, they received 390 complaints last year, all of which were investigated, Hanscombe said. The division inspected 3,521 units to verify exemptions and check that rent increases were allowed, she said.
"We follow up on any complaints that we get. They are all deemed important to us and we encourage, if someone sees something they don't think is right, to reach out to us," said Hanscombe.
She said that some violations are to be expected in the first few years of any new ordinance; it can take time for people to fully understand new rules and wrap their heads around changes.
"Education is really important at the beginning of an ordinance," she said.
THE FIRST COMPLAINT
The new tenants union has filed one complaint with the city so far over issues with a small building on Saint George Street in Back Cove. According to the complaint, the landlords had collected between $840 and $1,186 in additional fees from tenants for things like parking, and the use of the backyard and storage areas.
Tenants were reportedly told these fees were required, and they effectively raised rent by anywhere from 57% to 141% per unit. In a May 2023 ruling against landlord Geoffrey Rice, the city determined that if a landlord imposes mandatory fees on top of rent, it violates the ordinance.
The city investigated the report and subsequently issued a notice of violation, ordering the landlords to pay about $34,000 in overcharged fees back to tenants.
"I don't think this is a fluke or a standout case. I think this is a lot more common than anybody would like to admit," said Davis. "We are going to keep this up until everybody in the city is following the laws that are on the book to a T."
Davis hopes that the existence of the new tenants union paired with the city's own efforts to tamp down on rent control violations will motivate landlords to comply with rent control.
"Hopefully, this will drive more landlords to be triple checking that what they are doing is on the books because otherwise eventually we will find out," said Davis.
HOW IT BEGAN
The Portland Tenants Union was born out of the Trelawney Tenants Union, which formed in 2021 and has since filed dozens of complaints with the city against their landlord, Rice, many of which have resulted in fines and have blocked him from rent increases.
Ethan Strimling, a former mayor and a founding member of the Trelawney union, said their work made it clear that Portland needed a new union that could represent more people.
Last summer, he and other members of the Democratic Socialists of America for a Livable Portland decided to start looking into forming a bigger union. They held a barbecue at a park in the West End and were surprised when about 60 people showed up.
"We were like, 'Wow, clearly tenants in this city are realizing that rents are too damn high and want to get active,'" said Strimling.
Afterward, a group of core members worked to put together an organizational structure and the union officially launched at the end of last year.
About four months in, Portland Tenants Union has 623 followers on Instagram, 150 people on its mailing list, about 50 people regularly attending meetings and more than 30 dues paying members, according to Davis.
"The rent in Portland is just brutal and the affordability of this city is crushing. Rent control has been a vital piece of trying to slow the gouging of the working class. Tenants are fed up," Strimling said.
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