The Portland Tenants Union (PTU) audited new rental listings to measure ongoing compliance with Portland’s Registration and Rent Stabilization Ordinances during the month of March it reported in a press release issued yesterday with the intention of reading it to the city council at last night’s meeting.

The PTU surveyed 240 rental listings that appeared on Zillow and Craigslist and uncovered pervasive noncompliance with city regulations validating years of anecdotal complaints from tenants.

Overall, it was found that 60% (145 of 240) listings were not in compliance with city Ordinances.  Among these findings, the audit also produced evidence of the following: 1. Widespread non-compliance with rental registration; 2. Rent increases beyond legal limits; 3. Suspiciously high rents for small units; 4. Inconsistent or fraudulent registration data; 5. Large corporate landlords avoiding regisration; and 6. Security deposit and fee abuse.

“We knew that Portland has a tenants’ rights crisis, but we didn’t expect noncompliance rates to be this high,” said Sophia, a Portland tenant who assisted with reviewing the data.

The most common issue found was unregistered units.  About 22% of surveyed units were unregistered, meaning that there was no publicly available rental information for the unit.  Registration is the foundation piece of City oversight and facilities compliance with rent control and housing safety ordinances.  This means that the 52 unregistered units listed in March — and any other units in those buildings —— have not been inspected for minimum standards of habitality in rental housing, potentially putting tenants at risk of disease, injury or even death.

John Clark, one volunteer data analyst with PTU commented on the issue of unregistered units:  “We don’t tolerate other types of unregistered businesses operating in Portland.  Why is housing treated differently?”

The City of Portland has previously complained that it doesn’t have the capacity to verirify every data point on rental regulations.  If all of these unregistered units were registered today, the City would collect at least $13,250 in registration fees alone (potentially more if these units have been rented in previous years).  If this trend were to continue in following months, the City would easily bring in enough revenue in fees to hire more staff dedicated to enforcing rental registration and rent control ordinances in positions that would fund themselves.

Of the registered listings, PTU further narrowed listings to those clearly eligible for rent control (169 units), and the audit found that 25% had listed a rent increase beyond what is achieved by rent control.

“Each of these units is owned by a landlord plainly advertising his/her intent to break the law,” Clark continued.

Along with common disregard for rent increase limits, landlords commonly failed to correctly calculate rents in their registrations with the City.  Only about half (49%) of rent-control eligible, registered units in the survey produce rent calculatiions consistent with City code.

“Landlords are self-rporting illegal rents to the City on their registration forms and facing no consequences.  It’s clear that in Portland, when you’re a landlord, the law doesn’t apply to you.  It’s completely unacceptable,” said Bradley Davis, another organizer with the PTU.

“The city has fines that are specifically stated in chapter 6 of the Portland Code of Ordinances for late Long Term Registration and we have collected approximaely $150,000 so far in this fiscal year (7/1/24 – 6/30/25).  Fines for other violations of Rent Control are civil and would need to be collected through a Consent Agreement or through a court process.  There will be a Council workshop on the topic on June 9 – at which the City will give a presentation,  so we’lll have more information then,” said Jessica Grondin, City spokeswoman, in part in response to an inquiry from this blogger.  Unfortunately though, the response did not address how these unregistered listings would be captured and how the city would prevent it from happening in the future.