FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
City Council To Vote On Portland’s First Rental Registration System
The Rental Registration system data will help to provide essential support for existing and potential tenant protection policies of the City.
Portland, OR–City Council will vote this week to create a Rental Registration System, a real-time and reliable inventory of residential rental housing units within the city to help to provide essential support for existing and potential tenant protection policies of the City.
“The Rental Registration system will benefit current and potential tenants by giving the City access to real-time data, which will help direct policies to better address Portland’s housing crisis,” says Mayor Wheeler. “Both tenants and landlords agree: We need quality data. Most jurisdictions, including Gresham, Eugene, Seattle, and San Francisco have data and registration collection systems. It’s time for Portland to catch up.”
The Rental Registration system is the first step in collecting data on available rental units to better inform how the City creates housing policy and is a partnership between the Housing Bureau, Revenue Division, and Bureau of Technology Services. The data collected includes how many landlords there are in Portland, how many units and where they are located. By accessing real-time data, the City will be able to have a better idea of where to focus their efforts, and how the rental market is changing in Portland.
Policies that could be created using data found in the system include: mandatory rental unit health and safety inspections, mandatory or voluntary landlord/tenant education and training, low-income household legal representation outreach and education, landlord/tenant mediation services outreach and education, landlord standards/training/certification, renter opportunity to purchase programs, sales and use conversion regulations, mandatory relocation administration/exemptions and rent stabilization administration/exemptions. The Housing Bureau will also be able to evaluate the effectiveness of any regulatory approach and better inform policymakers on decisions.
In its first year, the program delivery and metrics of the Rental Registration System will continue to be calibrated in a phased rollout. Effective for tax years beginning on or after January 1, 2018 (due for most filers in April 2019), the Revenue Division will require all rental property owners or property managers to register their residential rental activity and provide rental location addresses on a schedule to the Business License Tax return. There will be no fee in the first year of the program.
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