After some serious inter-council deliberations, the City of Portland is now weighing a slew of recommendations among them a proposal to landlords to be more lenient to applicants with bad credit, criminal, and rental history. This also includes hardworking applicants who have prior felonies and whose credit score would normally disqualify them.
A vote is scheduled for the subsequent week even though Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, a vocal supporter, might be out of the city, suggesting Commissioner Chloe Eudaly, the proposal’s champion, is assured of its probabilities.
And Mayor Ted Wheeler foresees that nearly all of the council will approve the measure. He proposed six amendments, all however as soon as authorized by the council.
If authorized, the ordinance would go into effect March 1, 2020 — a delay from the unique proposed begin date of Oct. 1.
The ordinance units “low barrier” screening standards for landlords to make use of once they consider a renter’s software. It will restrict checks to felony convictions inside the previous 7 years and misdemeanors inside the final three years. Renters wouldn’t be rejected just because they have credit scores below 500, a court docket eviction order older than three years, or inadequate credit scores historical past.
The landlords as an alternative might use their very own standards, however, they’d have to offer written justification for denying a rental software.
Landlords have mentioned the latter possibility would add prices and open them to authorized legal responsibility, whereas the previous would limit their potential to guard their property and different tenants.
The ordinance is meant to assist renters with previous convictions or credit score dings to discover housing, notably in a market the place excessive prices already limit their choices. Eudaly has mentioned these background examination flags don’t precisely predict whether or not a tenant pays the lease on time, injures the property, or hassles their neighbors and as an alternative presents a cowl for discrimination.
The proposal additionally would bar landlords from requiring tenants to earn greater than two-and-a-half occasions the lease in revenue. Landlords say that raises the chance tenants will fall behind on lease, however, Eudaly argues that rising rents have left tenants little alternative than to increase themselves additional than is financially snug.
One of many amendments authorized would permit landlords of all sizes to refuse rental software from a potential tenant who has beforehand violated a rental settlement with the identical landlord.
One other would exempt sure shared properties, resembling when a landlord lives within the different half of a duplex from the tenant, or if the tenant lives in a house constructed into the owner’s home or yard. That modification was handed down narrowly, and solely after Commissioner Amanda Fritz reversed her vote.
Wheeler mentioned this can put the ordinance in step with the town’s requirement that enormous landlords pay relocation charges once they evict a tenant. He mentioned the ordinance might push small landlords out of the enterprise of offering to house and maybe flip a possible house right into a trip rental as an alternative.
“If we create an excessive amount of an administrative burden … it’d simply be simpler for folks to go click on the Airbnb website as an alternative,” he mentioned.
Eudaly pushed again, saying the town doesn’t have sufficient information to measure the effect of exempting small landlords.
“I frankly don’t suppose small-time landlords must be extra capable of discriminating than anybody else,” she mentioned.
A companion measure would require landlords to account for safety deposit funds withheld for repairs and to permit them to be paid in installments over three months.