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Portland voters weigh in on changes to rent control law

A pedestrian passes luxury rental apartments in Portland on Friday, May 6, 2022.
Troy R. Bennett
/
BDN
A pedestrian passes luxury rental apartments in Portland on Friday, May 6, 2022.

Residents in Portland today are voting on a local ballot referendum that would modify the city's three-year-old rent control law.

In 2020, city voters approved a measure that caps the amount by which many landlords are allowed to increase rent each year. Some landlords are critical of the law, and their ballot question would allow them to set a new base rent whenever a tenant moves out of a unit voluntarily.

But the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, which authored the initial law, is pushing back. The group says that rent control measures help to keep housing affordable, and that the proposed change would remove protections for tenants moving into a vacant unit.

Polls in Portland close at 8 p.m. tonight.