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An apartment building in Northwest Portland. Rising rents have priced out many tenants caught in a market with insufficient affordable housing and high demand as newcomers move to Portland.

(The Associated Press)

It's hard not to want to do something in response to the horror stories filtering out of what life in a housing crunch has become. Tenants and advocates talk of massive rent hikes driving seniors out of apartments, and of families so desperate to stay in their units that they don't complain to landlords about moldy conditions. Children cycle through multiple schools in a year as their families bounce from one temporary shelter to another.

But policymakers must ensure that in their rush to do something they don't end up doing the wrong thing. Unfortunately, some of the emergency proposals that lawmakers are pursuing in the coming legislative session threaten to make an already strained housing market even worse.

Take for instance, the slate of purported "tenant protections" that Rep. Alissa Keny-Guyer, D-Portland, plans to introduce with House Speaker Tina Kotek and other legislators. She told The Oregonian/OregonLive editorial board that she wants to shift the balance of power that she sees as overly weighted to landlords, particularly in their ability to issue tenants a notice to vacate an apartment once a lease expires, even if the tenant has not violated any of the terms of the rental agreement.

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Among the provisions that her bill will include: A requirement that landlords who issue such "no-cause terminations" or "no-cause notices" give tenants up to one-month's rent in relocation assistance; a measure that would require landlords to prove that they are not retaliating against tenants if they issue such a notice within six months of a tenant requesting a repair; a prohibition on raising rent in the first year of tenancy and an increase in the required notice period for rent increases to 90 days, similar to an ordinance passed in Portland.

The biggest failing of these ideas? None of these provisions remotely resolve the fundamental issue driving tenants' woes: The scarcity of affordable units. Extra time to look for a place to live and relocation assistance don't help much when there's no vacant affordable unit for the tenant to move into.

While extending the required notice for rent increases or for vacating a unit won't change matters much, some provisions could make life worse for renters. Consider the proposal to require landlords who issue a no-cause notice to pay relocation costs to the tenant. Landlords aren't going to absorb that new cost, but rather pass it on to the tenant by raising the monthly rent or increasing security deposits. Do legislators really want to give landlords clear justification to raise rent even more?

Other provisions unfairly hamstring landlords who should retain their legal rights to end a relationship with a tenant provided they are not illegally discriminating, said Jim Straub, the legislative director for the Oregon Rental Housing Association. Straub notes that he has in the past chosen not to extend someone's lease because of that renter's conflicts with either him or with other tenants, whose interests he also must consider.

"If someone is living in your $200,000 investment, sometimes you go, 'This is just a lot more stressful and difficult than it should be,' and you choose to end that relationship," he said.

But under Keny-Guyer's bill, if that renter has made a request for a repair within the previous six months - which is not unusual in older properties - the landlord would have to prove that he or she was not retaliating. How do you prove a negative?

The housing crunch, Keny-Guyer acknowledges, has resulted from several factors, including Oregon's popularity as a destination and a dearth of units due to low levels of construction during the recession. She and other legislators are looking at several other proposals that aim to keep or increase the supply of affordable housing units, dedicate revenue to an affordable housing fund and let cities mandate that builders set aside a percentage of units to be priced at levels far below market rate.

But the most immediate and broadest effects will be on landlords, the majority of whom own a few units at most, said Straub, whose nonprofit represents about 5,000 small-scale landlords across the state. In effect, the proposals simplistically cast landlords as the villains, while ignoring the genuine economic and management issues that most landlords must balance, from increasing property taxes to tenant safety. Incidentally, it is these smaller landlords who will most likely choose to bow out of the rental business altogether, rather than deal with increasing costs and restrictions - potentially leading to even fewer units on the market, said Christian Bryant, president of Coldwell Banker Mt. West Property Management in Portland.

No doubt there are landlords who act unethically, ignorantly or illegally. Certainly low-income tenants or immigrant families may lack the funds, support or ability to challenge a landlord. But instead of looking at how to beef up scrutiny, education and enforcement of existing laws to protect renters, legislators are hurriedly throwing out ill-conceived proposals that will bring a whole new slate of problems for which the state will, again, have few answers.

- The Oregonian/OregonLive editorial board

This editorial expresses the opinion of The Oregonian/OregonLive editorial board, one of whose members owns a rental condominium unit.