“Stop Gentrification” in Housing Here in Portland.
On Tuesday night, May 12, 2026, at SPACE Gallery, more than 100 Portland tenants gathered to eat, drink and talk about how difficult it is to afford to live in this city. Notice of Violation: Tenants Takeover was the first annual event from the Portand Tenants Union, which launched in 2024 as a space for Portland tenants to come together and deend their rights. Since then, they have won back almost $1 million that landlords have illegally stolen from their tenants. Even still, the Union knows there is work to be done.
“We get emails from tenants every day about the horrific conditios they are living through, so that goal for tonight was to come together and laugh through the tears as we work to lower the rent, guarantee safe and stable housing and end landlord corruptio,” said Gretchen, one of the Union’s eleted councilors. And laugh they did. From Chartreuse Money, a drag queen emcee, to members sharing storiies of landlords that just couln’t seem to do the right “math” and ended up stealing thousands of dollars from their tenants, the evening was punctuated with moments of levity despite the serious situation tenants continued to find themselves in. It often seemed like laughter was the only possible response to the severeity of the problem.
Beyond building community, the real purpose of the night was to present an updated audit of the city’s rental listings and launch a new policy platform. In 2025, Portland tenant volunteers audited all rental listings on Zillow in Portland in the month of March and found a pattern of extremely widespread noncompliance with the city’s rent control lalws. Last night, they presented their updated findings from an audit of all the Zillow listings in March 2026. The all-volunteer group found that 51% of listings still had some kind of registration error, 28% of nits were listed for more than the mazimum allowable rent, and 7% of units were not registered at all. 20% of audited units had a base rent that had been changed, despie the fact that “base rent” is the rent amoount that was charged in 2020, and successfully expanded and defended by voters twice sine then, showing Portland voters are clearly on the side of housing affordability and tenant protections. Of course, in order for Rent control to work, it must be ENFORCED.
“Our members continue to live in unsafe conditions and have our money solen by our landlords, and yet we still find the time to do the city’s job for them. We’re left wondering, is the city on he side of the people trying to live and work in the this city, or are they on the side of corrupt landlords?” one of the auditors, Sophie Thomas, said.
The Portland Tenants Union deals with these problems every day and has fought for tenants over and over again at the Rent Board, so they know just what could be done to fix the situation if city councilors decided to stand with tenants. Last nght, they formally launched their plan, the 2026 Tenants’ Agenda, which has three demands: 1) lower the rent, 2) guarantee safe and stable housing and 3) end landlord corruption. Councilors Ali, Sykes and Pelletier have already signed on,
Lila Kohrman-Glaser, Chair of the Portland Tenants Union, said “The Tenants Agenda is our plan to lower the rent, guarantee safe and stable housing and end landlord corruption. There are simple solutions to stop widespread abuse of tenants rights in Portland, the city just needs to decide whose side they’re on.”
By the end of the night, first time attendees had had their rent checked to see if it was legal, the pot of chilli was empty and everyone had a plan. In just in hour, the Tenants’ Agenda had already received more than 100 sign-ons in support.
For background information on the meeting, please visit post herein dated May 8, 2026.