91视频

Portland Commissioner Chloe Eudaly won election in November after waging an outsider’s campaign that unseated an incumbent councilor amid a wave of activism by tenants’ rights groups.

Shortly after the election, a prominent Portland developer called Eudaly 鈥渢hat gal that beat Steve Novick.鈥� In the months since, Eudaly has made good on many of her campaign promises, confronting landlords, developers and real-estate interests while seeking rules that provide greater stability for renters.

She has won several new protections for tenants, most notably a requirement that landlords pay relocation fees when evicting tenants without cause or causing them to move out by raising their rents by 10 percent or more. She also oversees the Bureau of Development Services, the primary city agency that reviews building permit applications.

This interview with Eudaly, which took place Friday in her City Hall office, has been condensed and edited for clarity.

91视频: I wanted to get an update on the BDS director. How goes that search and what stage are you at?

Chloe Eudaly: We’re going to do a national search and we are currently writing a draft job description. We’re going to review it with (the Development Review Advisory Committee) for feedback, advertise the position at the end of the summer and interview finalists in the fall and hopefully have someone named by the end of the calendar year.

We’re really pleased with the work (BDS interim Director) Rebecca Esau has done and would expect her to be a strong candidate if she chooses to apply.

91视频: Why did you get BDS originally? Did you request it as something you like overseeing?

Eudaly: (Laughs). No, I did not request it. I didn’t make a hard play for any particular bureau. I am obviously interested in housing. I did not expect the mayor to assign that to me, but BDS was a pretty meaty assignment.

91视频: In the Legislature, it looks like H.B. 2004 is on life support. Is there anything you could do locally or would like to do locally, and what is the momentum in Salem on housing issues?

Eudaly: We haven’t lost hope yet on H.B. 2004. I would say that while it is certainly not everything we hoped for, it doesn’t put Portland renters in any worse position than they are now, and it will provide some benefit and protection to renters across the state.

Change sometimes comes very slowly and it’s incremental, but as long as we’re moving in the right direction toward creating a policy that’s fair to both landlords and tenants, and provides some additional protections to tenants in this changing and challenging housing landscape, then you can’t lose hope.

91视频: When we hear from developers, they argue we can build our way out of the housing crisis. Do you have a view on that, and are further tenant protections needed?

Eudaly: It’s clear that there are other significant contributing factors to our housing crisis other than supply and demand. Supply is certainly one piece of it, but the problem we are facing now is developers are primarily interested in supplying the market-rate (housing) and luxury units, and not affordable and workforce housing, which is actually where we need the supply.

I’m very open to input from developers and landlords. It’s so far been rare that they bring anything meaningful to the table as far as policy solutions. As long as they cling to this idea that this is a simple problem of supply and demand, or that we should not be doing anything that would remotely impede their ability to make the maximum profit possible 鈥� it’s just not going to be a productive conversation.

As far as additional tenant protections, rent control is banned. We’re pre-empted on just-cause evictions. The biggest piece we had left was relocation. That’s the biggest piece of policy that we were able to move forward out of my office.

The additional protections are much smaller. We’re looking at security-deposit reform and better defining reasonable wear and tear. These are small things, but could make it marginally easier for some people to afford to move into a rental or to get the deposit back they’re entitled to at the end (of a lease).

We are looking at every possible thing that we could do to provide some protection and stability to tenants while being fair to landlords, because they’re certainly entitled to profit from their property.

When you’re living in this kind of rental crisis, you don’t want to do anything to compromise your housing. So we have a lot of especially low-income households living in unsafe, substandard housing, and we just saw in London what that can result in. These tenants are afraid to ask for repairs and afraid to request inspections because they may be retaliated against by their landlords.

Now that relocation (regulation) is in place, some renters feel a little more confident in negotiating with their landlord or requesting inspections because although the burden of retaliation will still be on the tenant, if the landlord gives a no-cause eviction or an extraordinary rent increase, the landlord will have to pay relocation (fees). So I feel it’s not just stabilizing renters but helping protect them from unsafe conditions and retaliation.

There are a lot of great landlords who are providing safe, stable housing who are not price-gouging their tenants during a housing crisis, but unfortunately the honor system just isn’t really working out for us.

91视频: So do you think being a renter yourself gives you a perspective on these issues that the council previously lacked?

Eudaly: Yes, I think that’s undeniable. I mean, there’s nothing like lived experience to provide insight and urgency.

Up until January, I was a low-income, cost-burdened renter, and my life had been significantly impacted by rent increases over the last five or six years of about 70 percent. I was having to make those choices between paying my rent and paying bills, and it’s a vicious cycle where you’re harming your credit score to keep a roof over your head, which makes it difficult to impossible to get out of that unaffordable rental into something more affordable.

Landlords really have tenants over a barrel right now. I know from talking to hundreds of people out in the community who are not impacted by the housing crisis because they’re comfortably ensconced in a home that they bought many years ago that is affordable to them 鈥� they’re shocked by the reality of Portland’s current rental market, and they tell me over and over again, 鈥淚 couldn’t afford the rent if I had to pay it today. My kids can’t afford the rent. My kids live in my basement鈥� 鈥� which I’ve heard on more than one occasion.

I think it’s problematic that we have a citizen legislature where there are no real (limits on) conflicts of interest and that means a third of our Senate are landlords. We have landlords who have a vested financial interest in maintaining the status quo making policy around tenant protections and using their own personal anecdotes as justification for their policy making.

And I’ve been accused of doing the same thing 鈥� that I should recuse myself from these conversations because I’m a tenant 鈥� which I think is absurd because I obviously don’t have a meaningful vested financial interest.

It’s just clear that the system we’ve had in place is not working, and we’re all paying for it.