C-I-L-L my land lord


Years ago, prison poets were fair game for parody on television. Nowadays I'm sure it wouldn't be allowed. But in its heyday, the best-known version of this slice of comedy was by Eddie Murphy, who on Saturday Night Live performed the classic poem "Kill My Landlord," in the character of its author, the maximum security inmate Tyrone Green.

I'm reminded of Murphy and Green when I read all the headlines in Portland lately about how terrible evictions are. The implication seems to be that landlords shouldn't be allowed to evict anybody, ever. This was Chloe Eudaly's claim to fame on the City Council: the proposition that landlords, like the drivers of cars, are evil and must be made miserable. It's the greedy landlords, this view goes, that are causing so many people to live on the streets.

The new kid at the Weed has a story up currently that doesn't say this directly, but it's not far beneath the surface. 

As pandemic-related tenant protections fall away, Portland evictions have skyrocketed. Since August, the number in Multnomah County has easily eclipsed pre-pandemic totals, rising above 700 per month.

In April 2020, evictions plummeted after the state issued a near blanket ban. This October, Oregon’s “safe harbor” law stopping the eviction of tenants who have applied for rent assistance ended. It had become less useful anyway— the state’s rental assistance program ran out of funding in August.

At a recent legislative hearing, Cameron Harrington, director of policy at the housing advocacy organization Neighborhood Partnerships, characterized the recent spike as a “dramatic cliff that renters are falling off.”

Ah yes, get the nonprofit industrial complex in there as early in the story as you can. People are getting evicted. The sky is falling!

In actuality, more than 90 percent of the evictions in Portland these days are for nonpayment of rent. It's hard to see that as wrong, or the property owner's fault. We live in a capitalist society. If you don't own space in which to dwell, you have to pay rent or else live in public housing of some sort. Yes, tenants have rights, as well they should, but you don't get to squat for free, even in a place that you used to pay rent for for a while. It's basic property law. It goes back eons.

In the People's Republic of Portland, of course, notions of private property are always open to question at the most basic level. But I'm having a hard time blaming landlords for insisting that they get paid on time for the use of their space. 

My view is not shared by the state and local governments, which are spending lots of public money to make lessors' lives harder. At Portland State University, there's an "Eviction Defense and Diversion Evaluation team." And soon Multnomah County voters will get to pass on yet another local income tax, with the revenue handed out to lawyers to drag eviction processes out even further than they are now.

I would never want to be a landlord, anywhere. It's not my thing. But of all the places to be one, Portland would be my absolute last choice. And of all the housing to rent out, low-income housing would be the least desirable. If the "housing first" crowd had any sense (and they don't), they might try being nicer to people who actually, you know, provide housing.

Comments

  1. Hmm. You bypass lots of facts - such as shortage of affordable housing, the Covid pandemic, the city’s investment in out of state developers who build 400 sq ft apartments that rent for $1700 a month. I’m sure you are proud of your revelatory opinion - which would be more convincing had you included some painful facts.

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    1. Here's one fact: in the third quarter of 2022 apartment construction in the Portland city limits was at the same level that it was at in the first quarter of 2014. Construction boomed in 2018 to get in before the inclusionary housing requirements/penalties kicked in, then slumped to 2008 levels in 2021. It's now a little higher, but still at only about half of the all-time peak. As to why the city makes an "investment in out of state developers," the question to ask is why the local developers don't want to build in Portland.

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  2. I bypass all irrelevant facts. If you don't pay the rent, out you go, and someone else moves in. It's hundreds, if not thousands, of years old. Life 101.

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  3. Well said Jack…….I should never be surprised by the entitlement mentality in Portland but “out of state developers”? Ya, you sure wouldn’t want to attract fresh investment capital after all the local housing investor/owners left for Clark county. “Non profit” is the truly perfect description of the city’s fastest growing industry….how ironic.

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  4. The shallow thinkers in the entitlement/nonprofit industry get aggravated with the concept of private property. Their thinking is two steps to the left of socialism.

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  5. As one who's represented landlords for 50 years in Oregon, spot on. What these geniuses never seem to realize is that capital always seeks the highest return, consistent with risk. Not only are the costs of having to litigate more evictions necessarily passed on in higher rents, but the more difficult you make the "landlord experience", the fewer, and more "corporate", landlords you'll have. This has been apparent in my practice for at least 20 years. "Mom and Pop" landlords get fed up with ORTLA's mandates, and sell out to either owner-occupants or large, corporate property owners/managers, who do everything "by the book", and maximize rents, since it's "strictly business" for them. Unless they think all rentals should be state owned, replicating the glories of the Soviet Union, (and of course, it seems, many do), the results of their counterproductive ideology are readily apparent.

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    1. Why is it they don't sell to other 'mom and pop' landlords, or, the heavens forbid...actual homeowners who might live IN the property, rather than parasitically suck revenue from renters of the property? I'd bet that for most 'mom and pop' landlords, it is 'strictly business', too. Methinks you paint a far too rosy picture of 'landlords', who are all over the map. The entire real estate market is perverse and generates assholes like Trump and his associates.

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    2. That's basically what the city is encouraging: 'mom and pop' landlords sell because the city has made it painful to be the landlord of a single-family house. They don't sell to other 'mom and pop' landlords because the city actively discourages owners of SFRs from renting them out. They find two classes of buyers: (1) homeowners, and (2) the corporate landlords that are buying hundreds of houses. The city council doesn't quite understand that no one can be a tenant unless someone else is willing to be a landlord - or maybe it's intentionally trying to drive landlords out of Portland so that the tenant class will have to leave also.

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  6. Landlord? To the impoverished? WTF? I thought the deal was to build an ADU in your backyard and become a lumpen-rentier. That way the streets can become choked with shitty cars that the renters weren't supposed to own because they were 'creatives' who used bicycles and mass transit (as if). I have one neighbor who couldn't afford their mortgage payments, so they built an ADU and the subsequent tenant is evidently carrying the cost of constructing the ADU and making up the 'owner's' short fall on their mortgage payment. Any wonder why there is no 'affordable' housing? Lumpen-rentiers.

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  7. I recall years ago the city floated the idea of building an ADU on your property at no cost to you but you had to rent it out to someone they chose for you for 5 years. As I recall it wasn't particularly popular. I thought of it because we have a double lot but I didn't trust the city and I like my space.

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  8. My commie kids are, like, kill the landlords, and I'm, like, not ALL landlords. I do agree with much of what you say here, but housing should be considered a basic human right, and rent is outrageous in comparison to wages in much of the country.

    How to fix it? Not with eviction moratoriums, but we do need to fix it. Another point, how much does the price of rent have to do with the number of homeless people? It's hard to quantify.

    I support universal basic income, public housing, and strong protections for renters.I also believe that taking away the right of landlords to evict tenants for any reason is wrong.

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