Down The Sewer Pipe – Politically Speaking

As Congress, and state Legislatures continue to have grand ideas (and how to pay for them) it behooves the people elected to office to comprehend that what they want to happen – may not provide the the relief as expected. Consider the evil the state of Oregon foisted onto it their citizens with rent control. The state legislature didn’t make rent control possible for those communities that were seeking to control rents, no, they hit the entire state with the thing.

Rent controls are supposed to, according to the legislation, make rents in Oregon more affordable to the people that rent (houses or apartments). There are a couple of things about this that is not noticed in the general media.

1.The State of Oregon has a law that prohibits renter’s from undercutting what the state is willing to pay for section 8 housing.

2.The state controls how much a renter can increase their rent, for their properties, each year.

What the law is attempting to fix, and it was passed in 2018, with the state making it’s first increase requirements in September 2019, are landlord raising rental rates based on local taxes, cost of living, and other factors. Three years on and people are screaming about how high rents have become, But the entire state is rent controlled. The rent control law explicitly state that rents can only raise a maximum of 7%+Cost of living.

And now we come to the money part. If in 2018 a person was renting an apartment for $500.00 a month in 2019 the state decreed that the maximum amount rents could be raised was 10.3%. This means that the apartment now costs $551.15. In 2020 the state said that the maximum for rent raise was 9.6%, now the rent s 604.06 per month. And in 2020 the state said the maximum for rent increases are 9.2%, making the new rent 659.63 Over a three year period the person renting the apartment must come up with an additional $159.63 per month. That comes on top of food costing more, transportation increases, and such.

Thus rent controls, in the state of Oregon, deprive people of food, some have left the state because they lost their job here and rent is beyond their means. What should have the state have done. The state should have gotten out of the housing market at every level. Market forces would have provided housing that is safe and affordable. As it is renters evicted tenants so that apartments could be condominiumized, and sold as individual housing units. People that owned multiple houses Sold them off, and new apartments began their rents at $2000.00 a month. The current state of high rents (average rental for a one bedroom apartment is Portland Oregon is $2000.00 per month) is the direct result of the Oregon state legislature not considering the consequences of the legislation.

Remember, when you are in office, the thing you are trying to fix may hurt most of the people that put you in office.