With Oregon's biggest cities in a housing crunch, lawmakers spent Thursday considering a measure that would require landlords to give specific reasons for evicting a tenant.
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Right now, property owners don't have to give a reason when they tell renters to leave. That leaves low-income people with little recourse, said Democratic House Speaker Tina Kotek in testimony to the Oregon House's Human Services and Housing Committee.
"It's a crisis. It's immediate, it's upon us, and people are losing their housing every day," she said.
But Ron Garcia of the Rental Housing Alliance of Oregon, which represents landlords, said no-cause termination is a tool "for certain instances that if ... taken away really limits our ability to manage the safe and stable environment of tenants."
The bill would also allow Oregon cities and counties to pass local ordinances to regulate rent increases.
