Willamette Week: Renters Feeling Squeezed in Today's Market

It's been two years since tenants had to worry much about being evicted, but that protection ended in March unless a tenant can prove a pending application for rental assistance.

With those COVID-19 eviction moratoriums over, back rent comes due from the first year of the pandemic. 

Sticker shock is sinking in for tenants receiving those renewed rent obligations in a housing market that continued to tighten during the lockdown. 

Vacancy rates are dropping, rents are rising, and fewer apartment buildings are expected to be built than any time since around 2012.

Willamette Week offers this advice for tenants: with Portland's strong renter protections, and state rent control capped at 10% this year, collect a relocation fee for rent increases above 10% or find a free lawyer through the eviction defense project. If your apartment is in crummy shape you can also refuse to pay if you get a lawyer to help you demand a fix.

The paper goes on to quote HFO Partner Greg Frick:

"Greg Frick of HFO Investment Real Estate says Portland's inclusionary housing policies and Oregon's rent control laws have also driven some out -of-state investors away from the Portland market. 'Now with inclusionary zoning and the perception of what's going on in Portland,' Frick says, 'if as an investor you have the ability to go to other places, those are check marks that aren't real favorable for the city of Portland.'"

Yup.