- After Oregon’s rent control law last week, Illinois and New York have introduced similar bills
- Those laws would slow or stabilize permitted rent increases and make it harder to evict tenants
- Cities including Philadelphia, Providence and Los Angeles are considering similar action
When he lived in Ashland, Oregon, Jesse Sharpe had his rent increased three times in one year: “We saw a $125 rent increase followed by another $50 increase followed by another $125 increase,” Sharpe recently said.
He spoke with his neighbors and found out they all had received the same increases. That’s when they learned that one investor had bought not only his apartment building, but the other five rental complexes on his street.
“It was really a bit of a wake-up call for us,” Sharpe said.
As Oregon becomes the first state with broad renter protections, which extend to some 500,000 households that live in rental housing built before 2000, housing-affordability activists are hoping it will be the first of many.