In the 1980s and 1990s, many states began banning cities from setting local limits on rent increases, encouraged in part by the American Legislative Exchange Council, which advocates laws that limit government and boost free markets. Oregon would become the first state to impose a statewide rent control policy, but such rules have been common for decades in large American cities, including New York, Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

In the Portland metropolitan area, which is growing by more than 30,000 people a year, the housing problem is especially acute. But the problem has spread beyond Portland, the state’s largest city with 650,000 residents, as the median rent has increased by more than 14 percent statewide in recent years.

In Talent, a city of 6,500 in southern Oregon, one in three residents spends more than half of his or her income on housing. Rents in Bend, one of the 10 fastest growing metropolitan areas in the nation, have climbed by more than 21 percent in the last three years. In Medford, the rental vacancy rate is less than 2 percent. And students at the University of Oregon in Eugene say pricey apartments have forced them to live in towns as far as an hour’s drive from campus.

Mark Gamba, mayor of Milwaukie, a suburb of Portland, said the desperation among tenants there was palpable.

“Tourniquets like this are needed to stop the bleeding,” he said of the state rent control legislation.

Still, some landlords say that the legislation will compel owners to take their properties off the rental market because they will no longer be able to earn enough rent from them — deepening the housing crisis rather than easing it.

“Rent control is not going to work over the long haul,” said John DiLorenzo, who owns about 240 apartment units and is a lobbyist for landlords.