About 20 people, mostly renters, with a few landlords in attendance, held the first meeting of a new tenants' group in Portland on Friday, formed in the wake of November's deadly fire on Noyes Street. While the city has formed its own task force in response to that fire, with representatives from Pine Tree Legal representing renters' concerns, the new group says tenants were not asked to join.
"It's outrageous, it's really insulting." says Ed Democracy of South Portland. Renters, he says, should have been included on the task force alongside landlords, but he says, just talking about the issue is a good first step. In particular, he approves of a plan to provide renters better access to key information.
"They're going in a good direction in terms of sunlight being the best disinfectant and having everything open and transparent and having an open database. It's a good simple place to start to make sure all the information about inspections is available to everybody in the city on the internet 24/7."
But members of the new group say more work is needed in the long term, beyond advising the task force, to guarantee housing that is both safe and affordable in Portland. Grace Damon, a Bayside neighborhood resident, says too often, renters have to choose one or the other.
"That's what I've been kind of dealing with myself and I know a lot of other renters in Portland that are dealing with the same kind of issues of wanting their house to be safe and affordable at the same time"
A few landlords also attended the meeting. One of them was Carleton Winslow.
"It's somewhat of a gripe session- all absolutely legitimate." he says, "I think the city has fallen down over the years in some of their things. The situation at Noyes Street was a perfect storm of situations coming together all at once with a very tragic outcome."
Six people lost their lives in the blaze that started sometime in the early hours of Nov 1. A wrongful death suit was filed in the days that followed, with tenants and former tenants alleging that the property's owner may have been negligent in fire safety. The tragedy on Noyes Street shows that something needs to happen to prevent another crisis situation from arising, says Winslow.
"I think a landlord-tenant board. The courts are horribly overburdened- and very expensive and very underfunded at the state level. If you can keep cases out of court that would be a great thing. Most landlord tenant issues revolve around a lack of communication."
The group says Friday's meeting was just the first of many, to be held monthly.
