[00:00:00] Speaker A: The truth can break through.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: Welcome to the Dimmer Bratz podcast. I am Virginia Stapleton.
[00:00:19] Speaker C: And I'm Chris Hoy.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: We have two special guests today, and I'm going to let them introduce themselves.
[00:00:24] Speaker A: Hello, my name is Bri Irish. I'm the co host of Housing Voices podcast.
[00:00:30] Speaker D: And I'm Marty Fulford. I am neither have co host of Housing Voices.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: Amazing. We are so grateful to have you guys here today. Thanks for having us. And we also have some folks in the room with us. We have a live pod going on today and folks are listening to this conversation about housing and are here with their questions. And I'm so thrilled that we are being able to bring this all together and. And put it out to you all.
[00:00:57] Speaker C: I'm feeling a little bit of pressure, I'm not gonna lie, because normally we don't have people like looking at us while we're doing this.
[00:01:02] Speaker B: Correct. And we can just kind of be silly and whatever and Vic edits everything out. But now we have these amazing people in the room here really excited to hear their questions. We do have several that we came up with to kind of get the conversation going, but first we're gonna have Chris read a bio for us.
[00:01:20] Speaker C: All right. Again today we have Bri Irish and Marty Fulford joining us from their own podcast, Housing Voices. Tonight talk all about housing in Oregon. If you're unfamiliar with Housing Voices, these two hosts bring their lived experience and professional expertise together to have conversations that lead to meaningful action.
They want to strengthen communities, expand opportunity, and build a more stable future for all of us. Bri and Marty, welcome to the pod.
[00:01:46] Speaker A: Thanks for having us.
[00:01:47] Speaker B: Chris, you and I were on Salem City Council together and was this like the main thing we dealt with?
[00:01:54] Speaker C: This was like the main thing we dealt with for a long time.
[00:01:57] Speaker B: Yes. And I remember that having so many conversations about kind of the three different approaches or the three different phases of folks that.
That we could approach homelessness. Do you want to share with that and kind of kick us off with this conversation?
[00:02:12] Speaker C: Sure. The way I came to think about this conversation is we have prevention, we have preventing homelessness, we want to manage homelessness, and we want to end homelessness. And the challenge is that when you spend money on one of those legs, it means that you don't have that money to spend on the other. So which is the most important?
Well, they're all important, right? Prevention is probably the most, of course, because then you don't have to do the other two things. But as a city, prevention is a real challenge. When that's not, you know, we're not in Oregon.
Cities aren't really designed with social services in mind and that sort of thing. And we're not funded for that. And so prevention can be a real challenge. I mean, prevention can be the things like the library and affordable housing and those sorts of things, but those are long term propositions. When we were, you know, when I was first dealing with this, we were dealing with a major crisis downtown where we had our, our sidewalks lined with people.
And so we were trying to figure out how to manage homelessness. People, especially in the, in the housing community and in the, in the unsheltered community, really get frustrated when we spend a lot of money on managing because it, it's kind of money down the drain because, you know, you're just managing the current situation. But the way I looked at it is we didn't have a choice. We were in a humanitarian crisis. And you have to, you know, you have to get through that before you can think about the other two things. And then of course, we want to end homelessness, which means no long term housing options, affordability, that sort of thing. So that's, that's kind of how I've always framed it.
[00:03:48] Speaker B: I am kind of chuckling to myself because we jumped right into this conversation and went straight to our unhoused crisis. Yeah. And the thing is, is these two things are so incredibly linked together, you cannot separate them. And so when you hear us talk about housing and we all of a sudden start talking about our unhoused crisis, this is how integrated these two things are. And I don't know about you, but when I am talking to members in our community, it's linked for them as well. Right. Housing and our unhoused crisis, those are often in the same sentence.
[00:04:21] Speaker A: Well, in a lot of ways, the dereliction of duty or lack of action on our housing affordability crisis is obviously directly contributing to that, especially when we're talking about our most vulnerable folks, a lot of our marginalized communities, seniors who are on fixed incomes, if the rent is, is skyrocketing or their utility bill is skyrocketing, there's no more money that they can pull from. And, and in a lot of areas of the country, older women, 50 plus are some of the, the largest growing unhoused populations across the nation because of that.
[00:04:53] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:04:53] Speaker B: When I was on city council the last year I was there, I believe our highest or fastest growing demographic in our unhoused was our senior residents.
And that I don't know for anybody else, but that just does not sit in my body well at all.
[00:05:07] Speaker A: No.
[00:05:08] Speaker D: I think one of the things that we're missing here is that some people link together the unsheltered with the housing. I think many people in the population don't. And I think that's part of the crux of the matter. Right. Is that people really need to understand, and I think that's the reason why we're all here. Right. Is to link together how integrated the unhoused situation is with the housed and, and how we can bring that together. Because I know people who are just like, well, that's their choice, you know, Many, many people. Many, many people. Right. And so I think, you know, part of it is really just the education of, like, look, all of this is, is interwoven and.
[00:05:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:50] Speaker D: Critical.
[00:05:51] Speaker B: Can I ask both of you, when you are, you know, meeting somebody for the first time and you say, you know, we do this housing podcast and people want to talk to you about it, how do you describe the current situation in Oregon?
[00:06:03] Speaker A: It's a crisis that I know firsthand. I mean, my family experienced homelessness when I was in high school, and I also am now a young person and I would like to be able to buy a home one day. I live in Corvallis, which is the most rent burdened city in Oregon now actually, and everybody my age is, that I know is unable to buy a house. And in a society where we're. It's predicated on how much money and generational wealth and a home being the most expensive purchase of most people's lives, we've got a really big problem and I would like at some point to be able to get into the housing market and be able to, to live my life. It is, it is a selfish thing, but also it is, it is a selfish reason that affects everybody else.
[00:06:49] Speaker C: Well, and as a society, that's what we define the American dream.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:06:54] Speaker C: As that's an integral part of it and we're failing at it.
[00:06:57] Speaker B: Do folks that, when you talk to them, do they see the concern of our young people?
[00:07:02] Speaker A: It depends on who you're talking to.
A lot of older people and, and folks that have been, I think, kind of, you know, quote unquote in the system, in, you know, in government, because I, I worked for the federal government for many years, don't really see a lot of, like, honestly, I'll be honest, anger that young people have that we saw a lot of people come before us that had an opportunity to buy a home and, and be supported. I heard some an older gentleman talk about how he bought his home for $47,000.
[00:07:35] Speaker C: Right.
[00:07:36] Speaker A: That is shocking to me.
[00:07:37] Speaker D: Right.
[00:07:38] Speaker A: A new car is that amount. And there is a lot of anger and apathy, I think, festering with people my age that, okay, you guys just don't care. There is a lot of hesitance to kind of get involved because it feels obvious to a lot of people. In Corvallis, we're closing schools because there's not enough children.
And that is a direct result of not having enough affordable family homes. And it's like, okay, so I feel like a lot of young people are looking like we're on this speeding train towards a cliff for most of us, and nobody's really interested in doing anything. And it's getting to a boiling point. And that was my kind of motivation for jumping into the housing voices and really talking about it, because I'm not seeing any action as I'm getting older and as all of us are, obviously. And what are we doing? Can we have some frank and honest conversations here so we can get going?
[00:08:32] Speaker D: I have four adult children, and I want a future better for them than what currently exists.
[00:08:38] Speaker A: Well, I think we need to have a lot more perspectives in the conversation around housing.
When I was doing policy on a federal level, I was. Especially when it comes to really complex topics.
It's hard to address, from a policy perspective, a complicated policy problem if you don't have lived experience, especially when it comes to something like housing. There are so many contributing factors to why people become unhoused or in that situation.
And I strongly believe that if you don't have some type of lived experience, that you can effectively solve that problem.
If you don't know what it's like to worry about how you're going to make rent or how you're going to pay your utility bill or your mortgage or your home insurance or the property taxes or anything like that. I don't think that you can do a good job solving that problem.
[00:09:24] Speaker B: You heard it here first. We need people with lived experience.
[00:09:27] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:09:28] Speaker A: Of the government, of the people, by the people, and for the people, and
[00:09:31] Speaker B: for many different reasons, right? Yep.
[00:09:33] Speaker D: Absolutely.
[00:09:34] Speaker B: Yeah. Can you talk to us about what you feel is missing in our housing ecosystem and maybe you want to expand on Ecosystem? I don't know. You know, I'm used to that language, but I'm not sure if everybody listening is used to that language.
[00:09:48] Speaker A: So when we talk ecosystem, I guess on our podcast we're talking about kind of the full spectrum, Right.
From shelter, Managed encampments, sheltered affordable housing, middle income housing, market rate housing. We talked about housing for seniors, housing for people with disabilities, the whole thing. And so that's what really we really try to focus on instead of just, okay, we need to go find a developer to build more single family homes, you know, in more suburbs and you know, more copy and paste homes. That's not really what we talk about. I don't think we've talked about that.
[00:10:24] Speaker D: I don't think we have.
[00:10:25] Speaker A: And we really focus on how we can create a housing and living arrangements for people that are reflective of how they want to live and truly kind of reflecting the American dream. Like I myself am not interested in having a big giant single family home. I am perfectly happy in a studio apartment with my cat. And we interviewed a good friend of mine, Cassie, who really is, is a huge advocate for people with disabilities and talked about her experience living with a mobility device that was really enlightening and the costs associated with that and how we can do better for people with disabilities who deserve the basic bare housing that we all need. Right. And so that's the differences of how
[00:11:09] Speaker D: the physical disabilities versus intellectual disabilities we've also.
[00:11:12] Speaker B: Right.
[00:11:14] Speaker D: And it's so different, the needs of each, you know, of each. Of each need. Right. And it's like, oh, wow, okay, I didn't think about that.
[00:11:22] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. It's really interesting to start thinking about the neighborhood that you live in. Right. And then imagine yourself having a physical disability and trying to move about that neighborhood and you start to realize that the majority of houses have stairs leading up to their front doors.
I know. I talked at length a few times with one of my constituents in Ward 1 about the fact that he wanted to run for office but was in a wheelchair. And you have to get 100 signatures.
[00:11:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:50] Speaker B: So how do you know? How does he knock on a door to get a signature when an entire city is built with stairs leading to their front door? So fascinating conversations that again, that experience, that lived experience really helps policymakers like myself open up my eyes to see the different hindrances that are put in front of people.
Not on purpose, right?
[00:12:11] Speaker A: No.
[00:12:12] Speaker B: But we can always build better in the future when we start to lead with empathy and, and have that more collective experience around the table.
[00:12:19] Speaker A: I think also when it comes to disabilities as well, I think all of our policies should be imbued with a disability lens as well, because at the end of the day, you know, if we all live enough, live long enough, we will become disabled in some way, shape or form. And a Lot of us are already disabled. We have a disability that is, you know, societally accepted.
[00:12:40] Speaker D: Right.
[00:12:40] Speaker A: Like I wear glasses, that's technically a disability.
And I think when we're talking about housing in particular, we have to keep everybody in mind and how are we making this easier? I think, Marty, we talked about this the other day. There was a home that you were trying to sell.
[00:12:53] Speaker D: So there's a house I was bringing my clients to. They had a child in a wheelchair. And I was like, hey, fair housing, right? Equal opportunity. We should be able to make these accommodations. Well, a new home builder is not required to make the accommodations in order that the doors go 36 inches so that a child can grow up in a space. Right. That means then that these people are going to have to pay for a contractor to come in. Right. To do this work. When it, when it's a very easily solved problem from the get go, why are we just not allowing for that?
And why are builders not being required to do simple and basic things? Putting in a handrail or a grab bar. A grab bar, thank you. I only do this for a living.
You know, putting in a grab bar, it's not a big deal. Right. Doing it after the fact is very costly. Right. And it's also in a way insulting to humanity because it's a human dignity issue, I feel. Yeah.
[00:13:50] Speaker A: She talked about even in her apartment where she's a renter, her building was making her pay for the addition for grab bars for her. And then when she moves out, she's got to pay for the removal of that too, which especially when we're talking about potentially folks that are on ssdi, they don't have a lot of spare money to go around. And now that's an extra cost added.
[00:14:13] Speaker B: Could you tell our listeners what that acronym stands for?
[00:14:15] Speaker A: Oh, Social Security and disability. Yeah, there you go.
[00:14:26] Speaker B: So I love this conversation about the ecosystem because it reminds people that maybe don't think about housing all the time, that this is a fluid system, that if one part of it gets gunked up, then the rest of it stops working.
[00:14:39] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:14:40] Speaker B: And so I would love for people, I hope that kind of opens up your, your mind and how you think about housing and how you think about the ecosystem in which we live in when it comes to housing and how we can help keep the wheels greased on that.
[00:14:51] Speaker A: There are also deep ramifications by getting gunked up in our housing ecosystem as well, because so much of our, our services are predicated on property taxes, especially on a local level. Right. So our schools Suff.
We don't have enough homes available for people to pay property taxes on. Our infrastructure, our water, sewer, they suffer as well. And those are far reaching ramifications because then, then you get into a rock and between a rock and a hard place, as so many of our cities in Oregon are. As when I worked on a federal level, there were so many cities that were ready and willing to build housing, but they didn't have capacity in their wastewater system or their, or their, or their drinking water. Right.
And that is hundreds of millions, depending on how big the city is. You know, tens of millions. But out of reach for most cities in Oregon to pay on their own and have to get help from the state or the federal government or. Yes, oftentimes most of the time both. And so when we think about a dereliction of building homes in a system that is predicated on us building homes and having home ownership, we are really stuck in a bad spot.
[00:16:03] Speaker B: So you just somewhat answered my first question, but I think we can expand on it. Sorry, My second question.
And that is, why can't we build housing faster? So you've talked a little bit about how cities here are sometimes hamstringed and cannot because of infrastructure. What are some other ways that you're seeing us get tripped up here?
[00:16:24] Speaker D: People want to keep their property values where they're at. And so I think that that causes a lot of friction in a community. And I don't think that people understand what that does. Right. Because people want you to build. They just don't want you to build where it might be an inconvenience to
[00:16:38] Speaker A: them or the parking. Especially when we're talking in a college town like Corvallis is, there are a lot of college students that don't have a car. Right. And can we build a, an apartment building that is closer to campus that doesn't need, you know, a Walmart sized parking lot? I understand where some of the, the older people are coming with mobility. I'm totally sensitive to that. But that absolutely cannot be a reason. Your parking, personal parking requirements cannot be a hindrance for other people who don't have that same.
[00:17:10] Speaker B: Well, the car conversation is very real when it comes to housing.
If you are new to this topic, to build parking is very expensive.
[00:17:20] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:17:21] Speaker B: And I would just like to say that we as a community are in a space that. That is the messy in between. Yep. Because we do not yet have public transportation that is really effective or conducive to folks who just want to go completely carless.
[00:17:37] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:17:38] Speaker B: And so we're not going to get that right. And for some time, but right now it's not really conceivable for people to say, yes, I'm going to ditch the car and I'm going to live in an apartment that doesn't have any parking attached to it and I'm gonna just do public transportation.
So I love how the intersection of housing and basically everything else, but housing and transportation really come into play together.
You know, one of the ways in which we can drive down the cost of housing is to drive down the cost of transportation.
[00:18:08] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Because if you're trying to go to the grocery store, then you have to. You've got a car payment or a car insurance that you've got to pay for. Right. Or, you know, on the flip side, as well, if you don't have a car, then you got to pay for that Uber, right, To get to the grocery store. And that's 20 bucks on top of your grocery bill.
[00:18:24] Speaker B: Is there any, any other things that we want to touch on about building housing faster?
[00:18:28] Speaker D: Health care?
[00:18:30] Speaker B: I love this. Yes. Housing and health care.
[00:18:32] Speaker D: Housing and health care, right? You're housed.
Your need for health care is greatly reduced. Right.
Not just physical health care, but mental health care also.
[00:18:43] Speaker A: Climate wildfire. We have still people that are unhoused from the 2020 fires in southern Oregon because of the snafu and bureaucratic red tape that is, you know, FEMA money and the wildfire recovery, which everybody is working as hard as they can, but there are still people that are unhoused. And how are we, especially from the state legislature, because the federal government is not in any hurry to come help us these days, as we've seen with some of the wildfire funding requests being rejected. How are we planning for the future so that we can get those people housed as fast as possible? And is that, you know, maybe like a more of a modular home so that we can at least get people into something that is more climate resilient as well. Because this is going to keep happening as we've seen in Spokane and obviously the entire east side of our state at this point, it feels like we have to have a plan for how we're going to invest in climate resilient homes too.
[00:19:43] Speaker C: And I would just like to add, kind of circling back to the whole property tax situation. The infrastructure is a, is a big barrier to prevent to building homes faster because this, the local governments don't have the funds. So we do these system development charges, which, you know, developers complain about and, you know, I'VE heard at the state level they want to start reducing system development charges. Well, how are we going to pay for those things?
[00:20:09] Speaker A: There are a lot of developers that'll come in and wanting to protect their pretty big profit margins. And they say, we want, you know, SDCs waive the service development charges or a multi unit property tax exemption. A lot of cities use as, you know, an incentive to build housing. And I understand why a lot of cities have leaned into that. However, somebody has to pay for that at the end of the day. And it is working people routinely that have to pay for that. And there is a levy that has to be passed or, or a bond or however that shakes out. Those developers don't end up paying on their, you know, millions of dollars of profit from these homes, but the working people do. And so then it gets to a point where, okay, my tax dollars were used to, you know, protect this developer's profits. And then I go, I'm still being taxed at the same rate or potentially more. I get into the home, I'm still paying property taxes, I'm still paying taxes on this mortgage, everything. And so our, our taxes are subsidizing essentially the entire process from start to finish. And that is really tough when a lot of Oregonians are really strapped for cash right now. And it is, it is a high cost burden environment right now.
[00:21:21] Speaker B: I would love to see more investment in the behind the scenes things like planners, folks who are out there approving the plans that developers are bringing forward.
These are areas in our system that can really slow down the building process.
And every moment that we slow it down, the more and more expensive it becomes to build. I would love to see a change in how we look at environmental approval processes in areas that have already been developed.
I'll tell you a funny story we got. The 20 is plenty taken care of by the federal government came in with a grant to help us do this program.
They had to require the city to do an environmental review for every post that they put in the ground with the 20 mile an hour sign on it.
So this process was going to greatly increase the cost of the project itself in an area of town that had been, you know, dug up a hundred times since the, the founding of our city.
And there was this whole environmental review and it would cause all kinds of delays and added expense.
So it was just really fascinating to see how that bureaucratic kind of overlay, which in some cases is needed and warranted, but in other ways I think we can all agree it's A little heavy handed. And that is just driving up the cost of our housing.
[00:22:52] Speaker C: There's a common understanding that we can build our way out of this crisis, but we've increased our housing supply and yet prices are not coming down. What are some other ways we can bring housing costs down for the people?
[00:23:03] Speaker A: Well, I would also counter that we haven't really built enough.
We have, but we truly have not built enough, especially with what the statewide goals are for housing production. We haven't come close to that even in our community. So there's a lot more work to be done on that.
[00:23:21] Speaker B: When I talk to people out on the door, they talk about this idea of, of building more housing. It's going to drive down the cost of housing. But at the same time, we have private equity firms coming in and buying up mobile home parks to the point of doubling their rent in a, in a space of five years.
Building another mobile home park is not going to drive down the cost of that person's mobile home rent because it's already set y and there's no way that that equity firm is going to reduce their rent. And I think that that's the, the spirit of this question. Is an apartment right now, a, a single room apartment costs more than my mortgage?
[00:24:00] Speaker D: Oh yeah.
[00:24:01] Speaker A: As someone who was paying 1700amonth for a studio.
[00:24:04] Speaker D: Right, right.
[00:24:05] Speaker C: Oh, no way.
[00:24:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:06] Speaker C: In Corvallis.
[00:24:07] Speaker A: No, in Portland. That was in Portland. But they do go for close to that in Corvallis, honestly. Yeah.
[00:24:12] Speaker B: Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen hundred dollars is not unheard of in the apartment area.
And so when we think about building more apartments, building more homes, you know, freeing up this ecosystem where folks are moving and things are kind of gliding in a more smooth way. That still doesn't help the person who is struggling to make a $1600 rent payment every month for nothing other than a place to, to lay their head for a month.
So I think that there is a lot of frustration in the community about that point. Exactly. Because sure, if we have so much supply that the demand is really low, and dear God, I think that's probably what, 10, 20 years out.
What about all of the people who are paying an unreasonable, I think sometimes criminal a rent amount at this point in time, they are not going to let up.
[00:25:06] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:25:06] Speaker B: So how do we bring down the rent for people who are currently in that position?
[00:25:10] Speaker A: Well, from my point of view, I think we need price control.
I think we need some real protections for tenants across the state, not only just in how much they're paying, but the conditions of their home that they're living in to protect them. Especially as we go through with climate change. There needs to be AC, I think is a mandatory thing for folks and it's something that we're trying to do in Corvallis, but we need to do it statewide. There needs to be some type of control for how much they're able to increase rents year by year.
And in localities, I think that there needs to be a max amount of rent that can be charged compared to wages as well. But that might be a little bit more of a radical thing, I think. But that's, I think unfortunately without other opportunities and options and levers at our disposal, that's what we're left with. And at the end of the day, we have to protect people.
[00:26:05] Speaker B: I will tell you, I don't think it's as crazy as it used to be.
[00:26:08] Speaker D: Oh, good.
[00:26:10] Speaker B: Yeah. I was out knocking doors and I was in a mobile home park and went up to a woman's door. She was a non affiliated voter and she was 82 years old. And I said, what's the biggest issue on your mind right now? And she looked me dead in the eyes and said, rent control.
82 years old. And I, I was flabbergasted. I mean, I hear that from 22 year olds, right.
And to have that kind of come at me like. And she was very forceful in her words.
And so it's really fascinating to hear the different ways that it's.
The housing crisis that we're in is really impacting people on multiple different levels.
[00:26:48] Speaker A: Right.
[00:26:48] Speaker B: You have our seniors who are living in fear of losing their housing. We have young people who are choosing to not have children because they cannot buy a house to live in. And that's the, that's the hope that they want for their family.
So there's so many different ways that the housing crisis is impacting each other. I'm really curious to know what the folks in the room have bought as far as going questions. And so when we come back, we are going to hear from them.
Hi, I'm Sabbath, I'm a renter. And so my question is, is aside from building more supply, which we know we're criminally under behind schedule on doing, what is the future of legislation for renter protection? What does a renter's bill of rights look like? And how can we legislate and monitor rent increases so that people aren't being taken advantage of?
[00:27:45] Speaker A: I used to live in D.C. and there was incredible tenant protections. There was the office of the tenant advocate which was where they had lawyers that you can call and say, hey, my landlord is doing, blah, blah, blah, is that allowed?
[00:28:01] Speaker B: Right.
[00:28:02] Speaker A: Or my, I've had a leak in my roof, my landlord isn't fixing it. And I. And they would send out an inspector that week every time that I had. And I, I had a pretty, pretty shady landlord a couple of times in, when I was in D.C. and within the week, they would send an inspector out and from the front door all the way to my apartment, they would have a clipboard and be like, that's not good, that's not good, that's not good. I cost my landlord tens of thousands of dollars. And they would call back and say, hey, has he fixed it yet? No. Okay. You know, racking it up, racking it up the whole time. And it was incredible. Things got fixed and it worked. And it was amazing to be able to go and ask for help. Like, am I crazy for thinking that I need this? Or something like that.
And that is something that I truly would really love to see here. Like, on a statewide level, that's kind of a big ask. I've been working in Corvallis on a tenant's bill of rights, hopefully to be passed with the, by the city council.
And also some of the things that we've been talking about in renter protections is protecting families with children in school and banning evictions during the school year, at least, so that kids don't have the tumult of yanking them out of school. They have to move or they're unhoused. Because I remember when I was in school and homeless and it was really hard to pay attention to school. Right.
So things like that, having a cool place mandatorily at least in air conditioned, so that you can be safe, potentially. Air quality, if there's air quality, filtration, things like that are good starting points.
[00:29:39] Speaker C: So I, I completely hear what you're saying. I just want to kind of play devil's advocate for a second. So, of course, what do you do? I mean, and I think we're probably talking mostly about big corporate landlords, but what do you do? Let's say it's a, a mom and pop house that, you know, maybe they have a second home that they rent out and they really rely on that rent to pay the mortgage payment. And so let's say that the people get behind on their, on their rent in September and you can't do an eviction during the school year. That means they have nine months with no rent. How does. I mean in the real World. How does that work?
[00:30:13] Speaker A: That it's, that is really, really tough. And that's something that we are still actively having conversations about.
We haven't found a solution to that, honestly. Potentially it. Some solutions have been some type of like a resilience fund within whatever office is potentially created for renter protections to have, you know, like an in case of emergency fund that those landlor can be supported through.
[00:30:41] Speaker D: Tenants have to be protected. I think there also has to be a balance and it, you know, when we go too far one way for either side, we're out of balance. And I think you just have to be a little bit more careful. Is it a big corporation? Is it, you know, somebody like me? It's like, oh, I couldn't, I couldn't afford that. That would, that would cause bankruptcy. Right. That's not fair to my family and my children. Right. In order, you know, you can't sacrifice one for the sake of another. Right.
[00:31:11] Speaker A: Or potentially like a tiered implementation. You know, if you own X amount of units, then this, these requirements apply to you. If you own one or two, maybe not.
[00:31:22] Speaker B: Welcome to the hard work of making legislation.
[00:31:24] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:31:25] Speaker D: It's so hard. That's why you're doing it. Not me.
Yeah.
[00:31:29] Speaker B: I will say, when you first started talking about your office of. What did you call it?
[00:31:34] Speaker A: Tenant advocate.
[00:31:35] Speaker B: Tenant advocate. I feel like in our world as a whole, there's just this grave imbalance of access to legal support.
[00:31:45] Speaker A: Oh yeah.
[00:31:46] Speaker B: And legal literacy.
Because even me in my, in my very privileged life, I don't have access to a lawyer. Like I'm sure I could try and like sit down and try and figure it out and make some calls, but that whole world is foreign to me.
But if I needed somebody. Right. To know that you had a public servant that you could call to me, that really drops a lot of barriers.
[00:32:11] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:32:11] Speaker B: Especially just the terminology of like public servant.
[00:32:14] Speaker D: Right.
[00:32:15] Speaker B: It's much more approachable for somebody who doesn't have that literacy. So then make the phone call. Right. And then get the support that they need, the advocacy that they, that they need.
[00:32:24] Speaker A: Hi, my name is Chris.
[00:32:26] Speaker B: Do we have any form of rent control in Oregon? So we do have. Oregon allows for up to 10 rent increase each year. It's. It's basically 7%, but plus inflation. So that's another 3.
So in 2026, that increase is about 9.5 for a typical residential household under the state's rent stabilization law. So a separate 6% cap applies to specific mobile homes and manufactured dwelling spaces. But that's they have to be more than 30 spaces in each location. So I, what I want to say about this is that this cap applies to residential structures that are more than 15 years old. And I think this is where Oregon got into trouble. Would you agree with me?
[00:33:10] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And I honestly would probably, you know, my pie in the sky legislative world, I would reduce the number of spaces, number of spaces below 30. There are a lot of smaller mobile home parks, especially from where I live in, used to live down in Southern Oregon as well, that really served as affordable housing for people small kind of mom and pop owned parks and that are getting bought up by some, some corporate folks. There was some, you know, some of the people living there actually got together and bought one of them just off the top of my head and down in Rogue River. But that's really rare. And if that is, you know, if folks have the capital to be able to do that as well, I think it, I think it should be lower, honestly.
[00:33:53] Speaker C: So I've heard and I don't know if these anecdotes are widespread, if they're true, but I've heard that the way that some landlords get around this is they'll come up with a reason to evict and then they'll raise the rent and have new tenants. And so basically the limit is not effective because it actually increases people being evicted. Has that been your experience or.
[00:34:20] Speaker A: Yeah, okay. Yeah, absolutely.
[00:34:22] Speaker D: So the, but the rule is, is you know, every year, so every 12 months. But leases, right. It depends on when the landlord, how long the lease is for. So if somebody's in a house or in a rental for 366 days. Right. Then they automatically go to a month to month and you can't really get them out for any reason except on their own if for non payment or if you or your family member wants to move back into that property. So a lot of it has to do with making sure that people are out by that one year marker. You've given them the 90 day notice that they can't.
[00:34:58] Speaker C: Oh, interesting.
[00:34:59] Speaker D: So it's really the combination of what are the tenants rights after the first year as well as what can I increase it by?
[00:35:06] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:35:07] Speaker D: Because if somebody leaves voluntarily, then you're right, this rule doesn't apply. This is just for people that are continuing on, going back to like the
[00:35:15] Speaker A: office of the tenant advocate that I talked about having that opportunity for folks to call up. Honest. Even landlords too.
[00:35:21] Speaker D: Right.
[00:35:21] Speaker A: For, for the full spectrum of people in our housing ecosystem. If you're renting, if you're renting to people, you can pick up the phone and say, hey, is this okay for me to do or did I mess up or how do I proceed to protect everybody's rights? I think is, is a really important
[00:35:36] Speaker D: thing because it's very complicated.
[00:35:38] Speaker B: It is, yes. And I, and I will say there are folks on, maybe I'm going to guess the opposite side of the spectrum politically as the folks here at this table who blame a lot of our housing crisis on this rent stabilization law.
[00:35:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:54] Speaker B: So this idea is that this law created scarcity in the market. Right. So if you know as a landlord that you can only now increase your rent x amount, then you are going to increase that amount every single year regardless of whether or not you need to.
[00:36:10] Speaker C: Right.
[00:36:11] Speaker B: Or it is warranted.
[00:36:12] Speaker D: Right.
[00:36:13] Speaker B: And so that then is driving up the cost of housing across the board. And now again back to this 15 year old loophole as I call it. If you build housing now, they have 15 years to jack up the rent every single year. They have no, you know, stipulations on how much they can increase their rent a year over year. And once they get to that 15 year mark, then they're stuck with that, you know, 7% plus plus inflation. So there is no incentive for them to keep the housing cost lower during that first 15 years. And so you see it happening again and again and again that people are really increasing that scarcity and that kind of intensity of increase in rent year over year for that 15 years.
And I couldn't agree more. I think that's really honestly what's happening. And so I do think that we need to fix the loophole.
[00:37:08] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:37:08] Speaker B: I don't think we should get rid
[00:37:09] Speaker D: of the whole thing.
[00:37:10] Speaker B: I think we actually need to fix the loophole.
[00:37:12] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Some type of, of maybe a tiered or rolling increase percent increase for, for that mandatorily for each year. I don't know what that might look like. Obviously I think it would depend on each, each locality.
[00:37:26] Speaker B: Right. And I, the devil's advocate to that, to my own argument would be somebody who is coming in to build new housing says it costs a hell of a lot to build housing right now and I need to be able to recoup my costs.
[00:37:38] Speaker A: Right. Which I had a harebrained idea one day I was at a housing conference. Let's build the South Coast.
And something in my past work, I worked on some health policy during COVID and there was, we have our strategic national stockpile for medical equipment that a lot of our hospitals Use. Why can't we also have a strategic stockpile of housing materials that the state then like bulk buy? Right. If we are subsidizing all of the. A lot of our housing production, why can't we also step in with some of the materials as well to prevent also a lot of the price fluctuations from some international trade stuff that has been happening, you know, with different countries, so that we can provide a buffer for other localities to use maybe on like a regional basis or something like that. Because that really was very instrumental during COVID when there were areas that didn't have the access to the PPE ventilators and things like that.
And I think potentially in an emergency use case scenario, something like that might be, you know, a spaghetti on the wall idea.
[00:38:50] Speaker B: I think that's what it's going to take. Right. Everybody kind of throwing everything they have at it. I know. I would love to see the creation of renters, unions. That would be an amazing development to have happen across the United States, across the world.
It's going to make our communities all the better if we can get people housed.
[00:39:06] Speaker A: And it's fiscally responsible. It literally is more fiscally responsible to keep people housed than let them fall through the cracks. You know, chronic health conditions get worse. You know, disabilities get worse, mental health. It is harder to pull somebody back from the abyss than preventing them. And sometimes maybe it's just helping them out with a utility payment. Right. It's not.
It's sometimes so small that go. Those things go so much further.
[00:39:32] Speaker B: Mm, I agree.
[00:39:33] Speaker C: And you know, Virginia, you kind of touched on it. But I just want to talk about, just for a really brief second. I know we're getting down on time, but we've got to quit demonizing folks who are not as. Who are not as lucky as the rest of us to has have a place to live.
[00:39:48] Speaker A: It is luck.
[00:39:49] Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, we, as a, you know, we always seem to want to demonize people who are different than we are. And it's. People who are unsheltered are not the bad guy. Right. I mean, we need to quit treating them that way. And we need to remember that they are our neighbors and that they are people. And gosh, it just, I don't know, just breaks my heart to see the way that we demonize folks.
[00:40:14] Speaker A: Marty and I are really involved in supporting our unhoused neighbors in Corvallis. I do street outreach twice a week with the Corvallis daytime drop in center and the amount of people that have master's degrees that are on the street. Right. That have had amazing, incredible lives and they got hurt at work or, you know, a surprise bill or something. Right. Like, and I think I saw somewhere on a statistic that I think 72% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck right now.
[00:40:44] Speaker C: Right.
[00:40:45] Speaker A: And I think we are only as safe as the most vulnerable people in our communities.
[00:40:50] Speaker B: Well, I have really just been so grateful that the two of you are here to share your perspectives on housing. Housing here in Oregon's specifically, it has been a just a breath of fresh air to, you know, have my time spent with Chris shared with two other lovely people.
So thank you so much for that and for our guests in the room, thank you so much for being here. It's been really fun to get to kind of have that pressure put on us. Chris.
[00:41:15] Speaker C: Yeah, it's been, it's been a whole different dynamic and I really like it. Actually. It's kind of cool.
[00:41:19] Speaker B: It's been very good. So thank you everybody and we will see you next week.
Sam
[00:41:56] Speaker A: to meet a special thanks to our partners Marty Bulford.com and Cyanette.net for supporting thoughtful dialogue around housing in our communities.
Music for Housing Voices is Provided by Karen DeWolf and Adrienne Criz. Thank you for helping us set the tone.
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