C-I-L-L my land lord

Years ago, prison poets were fair game for parody on television. Nowadays I'm sure it wouldn't be allowed. But in its heyday, the best-known version of this slice of comedy was by Eddie Murphy, who on Saturday Night Live performed the classic poem "Kill My Landlord," in the character of its author, the maximum security inmate Tyrone Green.

I'm reminded of Murphy and Green when I read all the headlines in Portland lately about how terrible evictions are. The implication seems to be that landlords shouldn't be allowed to evict anybody, ever. This was Chloe Eudaly's claim to fame on the City Council: the proposition that landlords, like the drivers of cars, are evil and must be made miserable. It's the greedy landlords, this view goes, that are causing so many people to live on the streets.

The new kid at the Weed has a story up currently that doesn't say this directly, but it's not far beneath the surface. 

As pandemic-related tenant protections fall away, Portland evictions have skyrocketed. Since August, the number in Multnomah County has easily eclipsed pre-pandemic totals, rising above 700 per month.

In April 2020, evictions plummeted after the state issued a near blanket ban. This October, Oregon’s “safe harbor” law stopping the eviction of tenants who have applied for rent assistance ended. It had become less useful anyway— the state’s rental assistance program ran out of funding in August.

At a recent legislative hearing, Cameron Harrington, director of policy at the housing advocacy organization Neighborhood Partnerships, characterized the recent spike as a “dramatic cliff that renters are falling off.”

Ah yes, get the nonprofit industrial complex in there as early in the story as you can. People are getting evicted. The sky is falling!

In actuality, more than 90 percent of the evictions in Portland these days are for nonpayment of rent. It's hard to see that as wrong, or the property owner's fault. We live in a capitalist society. If you don't own space in which to dwell, you have to pay rent or else live in public housing of some sort. Yes, tenants have rights, as well they should, but you don't get to squat for free, even in a place that you used to pay rent for for a while. It's basic property law. It goes back eons.

In the People's Republic of Portland, of course, notions of private property are always open to question at the most basic level. But I'm having a hard time blaming landlords for insisting that they get paid on time for the use of their space. 

My view is not shared by the state and local governments, which are spending lots of public money to make lessors' lives harder. At Portland State University, there's an "Eviction Defense and Diversion Evaluation team." And soon Multnomah County voters will get to pass on yet another local income tax, with the revenue handed out to lawyers to drag eviction processes out even further than they are now.

I would never want to be a landlord, anywhere. It's not my thing. But of all the places to be one, Portland would be my absolute last choice. And of all the housing to rent out, low-income housing would be the least desirable. If the "housing first" crowd had any sense (and they don't), they might try being nicer to people who actually, you know, provide housing.