Governor Kate Brown of Oregon signed the nations first state-wide rent control bill into law on Thursday as well as calling on lawmakers to focus on new housing initiatives. The renter protections will take effect immediately due to an emergency clause in the bill. According to Brown, the new laws "will provide immediate relief to renters struggling to keep up with the rising rents in a tight rental market.
I'm not too sure this is going to have the intended effect, though. Price controls of all kinds generally spark unintended consequences, many of which run directly counter to the objective. In this case, it is said to be a tight rental market, which means there needs to be more housing, but because the profits of landlords are now limited, developers will be less likely to build. And when they do, they’ll be more likely to build office space or industrial space, hence the rental market will be even tighter. A better solution may just be to give money to those in need. More compassionate, more effective, less bureaucratic. On the other hand, this law is only limiting landlords to rent increases of 7% annually in addition to inflation, which means they can still raise rents at a preposterous rate — which is to say, this is a very weak law that will do almost nothing in practice.
There are thousands of empty houses and apartments in the Portland area. A lot of them are owned by REITs (real estate investment trusts) and other antisocial/predatory entities. If this results in actual humans being able to occupy homes, I would be willing to suspend my usual anti-state ideology in favor of housing.
The poet's words are still prophetic:
"...with usury is no clear demarcation
and no man can find site for his dwelling."
Canto XLV by Ezra Pound
