"The ground was eroding beneath Portlanders. Yet another rent increase. An eviction notice is on the door. The reasons varied. The outcomes, the same. The stew of bad policy decisions that had been bubbling in the housing market for years were now overflowing. A government and corporate-made monsoon. Homelessness was everywhere. The crowd of tenants and housing advocates who convened at Peninsula Park was electric. They were about to put the city on notice-the tipping point was here: A Renters' State of Emergency was declared."
"A simple slate of demands was unveiled as part of the declaration: rent control, a temporary moratorium on no-cause evictions, and mandatory relocation assistance should someone be evicted due to unreasonable price gouging. And yet a decade later, in 2025, Oregon is experiencing the highest eviction levels in its history-so what happened? While numerous hard-fought victories emerged from this campaign (also known as the Renters' SoS) over the years, they were only partially enacted by local governments."
Portland experienced worsening housing insecurity culminating in a Renters' State of Emergency declared in 2015, driven by rising rents, evictions, and decades of policy failures. Activists demanded rent control, moratorium on no-cause evictions, and mandatory relocation assistance for price-gouging evictions. Some reforms were enacted locally, but by 2025 Oregon faced its highest eviction levels ever, indicating those measures were insufficient or unevenly applied. Visible homelessness, rare before the 1980s, grew after policy shifts and limited federal data. Many plans since have produced mixed outcomes, and systemic problems in housing policy and market forces continue to create displacement and instability.
Read at Portland Mercury
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