 I'm Lisa Savage, thanks for joining us for Pathways to Progress. I'm here with your counselors, your city counselors, Roberta Rodriguez and Victoria Pelletier. One of our most popular shows in the past was the one where we talked about what was on the ballot in November. Based on feedback from viewers, many people said that was very helpful. It was a confusing ballot, there were a lot of items on it. Come Tuesday, this coming Tuesday, June 13th, there'll only be two items on the ballot. So our discussion is much easier today, but thanks so much for taking time to be with us and to talk about it. I do wanna emphasize this is not a debate or even a forum type of show. It's a chance for two of your newer and more progressive counselors to give their views about what's going on in the city of Portland, what's going on in city government. And so tonight we're gonna talk about the election, but we will give our own opinions. I'm not a Portland voter, so I'm not gonna give my opinion. You'll probably be able to figure out maybe how I would vote if I was voting in Portland. So we have framed tonight's discussion a little bit with some, basically to me the essential question would be, is rent control as it now exists in Portland enacted in two other referendum processes broken? Is it broken? Is it not working? And then if so, would question a fix that? And of course, people on the yes on a side feel that something is broken and they would like to fix it. And that would be being able to raise the rent without limits if someone voluntarily moves out, a tenant voluntarily moves out. And the people wanting to vote no on a saying to vote no on a are basically saying we did a good job. It's not perfect, the rent board needs a fix, but essentially it's not broken, so let's not change it. Does that seem like a fair summation? The campaigning has been hot and heavy. The yes on a people have raised $140,000, so she said. There are signs all over the city, I'm sure you've seen them. Some of them, I thought they had been vandalizing each other's signs and then I realized, wait a minute, that sign was created to be vandalized. There's a little bit of false flag type action going on. That's always interesting and exciting. And I saw one today that said yes on a, defeat DSA, which was interesting to me because DSA was behind most of the referendum items that did pass in November. They've campaigned heavily to vote no on a, so that was a new wrinkle too. Anyway, we would like to hear from the people that are right there on the ground floor with this, the first thing I'm going to ask you is, why did you change the name of the referendum item that was submitted, right? It was originally called an act to improve rent control. And the city council opted to change the name to better reflect the intentions according to this. And it's now called an act to amend rent control and tenant protections. What was the thinking on that? You want me to, yeah. Yeah, so when, I guess it's worth going over, when there's a citizens initiative or a question being put on the referendum, the council has to approve it. So we have to vote to have it actually end up on the ballot. And through that process, we have a couple of different options. We could, you can just adopt the policy as it's been written. You could put a competing measure on the ballot. And then you also have to have a discussion about the summary and the title. What's going to be presented on the ballot? And we had a discussion, I believe it was councilor Zaro presented an amendment to make this change. And it was, the discussion was pretty much the name, which is not indicative of what the policy impact was going to be. It's not improving it. It is going to have a change and whether it's going to be improved or be worse, to be determined. I think that's what the discussion that we're going to have today. But then the name of the ballot question, I think now better summarize or better explains what the question asked to do. At least it opened to interpretation for the voter to say, yeah, this is actually going to improve it. So I'm going to vote yes, or this is going to be incredibly detrimental. I'm going to vote no. Does that make sense? Yes, it does make sense. Yeah. And I think, well, even hearing you say that now, because we all unanimously supported the change, the name change. And I think it was a good idea to bring forward. At first I was kind of like, I don't know if I saw the distinction, but now even hearing you talk about it, I do now remember that it was an act to improve rent control. And that was the big word that we were all talking about because improving it is so subjective based on what you're looking at. If you're a supporter of rent control or you're not. And so to say like this is going to improve something, people would go to the ballot and say, well, this is going to make rent control better. So I'm going to support it. And I think just changing that wording was really important and significant for us to do because I do know that this conversation around rent control, people have a million different opinions of it. And the thing that we wanted the most was just to make sure that when they do get to the ballot to vote, they're very clear on what they're voting on and they're very clear on what would happen if that question does pass. So you clarified it for voters and improve is obviously a value judgment. And really it depends on your point of view. If you're a landlord or a rental housing provider as the current euphemism preferred to landlord, then it would be improving because you could charge a lot more rent than someone moved out. But from the point of view of tenants, of which I'm assuming there are vastly more renters in Portland than there are landlords. From the renter point of view, it would not likely improve the law. What are your thoughts? Do you want to tell us how you're going to vote? Do you want to take us through the arguments for a yes vote or a no vote? Yeah, I mean, yeah, I'll go. I don't think it's a big shock to anybody that I am not in support. Yeah, drum roll, I am not supporting. Question A, I say this, I feel like at a lot of meetings is like I'm one of the only renters on the council. I have only ever rented. I will probably rent forever just based on how the universe is working. But yeah, I think it's, I think question A is really harmful and is really scary. And this is a city of renters. And I feel like that's something else that I say a lot where we have really limited rights, like period for us to advocate for ourselves, for us to feel safe. You know, a large percentage of our renters as well are people that are a little bit lower income, younger people, we have also elderly people, people of racial and ethnic minorities that are renting in Portland. And so if question A passes, it's gonna have a disproportionate impact on these demographics. And it's also just going to displace a ton of people who are living in Portland who are barely hanging on because it's very difficult to live here but it's very difficult to run here. And so that's always going to be my perspective as a renter. What I'm looking at this question is I'm concerned that if I voluntarily leave my apartment and maybe I know someone that's looking for an apartment, the landlord will be able to jack the rent up as much as they want an entire blank slate. So I don't understand how this would be good for tenants. I hear that a lot, like it's good for tenants and it's good for Portland. And I don't, I can't align with that because I feel like good for tenants is to have rental protections. And even what we have now for rent control, it's not that much. I think we have like the basic human rights of rent control which we should all have and we shouldn't have had to fight for. So now having this really looming over us where if we do leave the rent can be jacked up is terrifying for a lot of us who are already worried about being able to afford rent in this city which is getting increasingly unaffordable. We're being priced out by Airbnb's and short-term rentals and we just don't have a lot of footing. We don't have a lot of support. So I'm always advocating for tenants as a tenant. I also think it's really important for me to do so as the counselor of district two which has a high demographic of renters, a high demographic of people of color. And this is going to have really significant negative impacts on tenants in Portland and people who deserve to live and work here. And for that reason alone, I mean question A is scary for me and scary for a lot of other individuals who are gonna wonder what their living situation is gonna look like a year from now if this question does pass. I thought one of the phrases that really stood out to me was when a tenant voluntarily vacates. So in other cities that I've lived where there was rent control, the landlords often would not maintain the building for years, for decades they would not maintain the building. New York is like the San Francisco in order to try to force one of these voluntary, the tenants moving out because then they can, then they go in and do all the maintenance that should have been done while people were paying rent and then the rent goes up. I heard a statistic, I didn't look it up myself but Santa Monica removed the rental protection limiting how much rents can increase as this ordinance would do and their rents doubled in Santa Monica, California. Obviously that's not Portland but that's significant. Rents are already barely affordable for many other people that work and serve us and keep Portland running. And at our last show we discussed the homeless problem and so many people being unhoused and throwing people out of housing that they're in certainly isn't gonna help that problem. Yeah, I think, so first I guess we should say Tori and I are gonna agree on this and as you said at the beginning this isn't intended to be a debate or a forum, right? Like there's an opportunity for us to talk about our opinion and our experiences as counselors. So I think when Tori talks about her being a renter and bringing that perspective to the council I think that that's the value of this show and this setting. So I just wanna say I appreciate that. Also we're in our normal time slot now which is really cool because we've been just kinda skipping along for a while. And I think we have graphics today. So we're doing a lot of really cool things. So I think we should focus on that just for a moment. And then second, I guess when we have this conversation we should first center it on we're in the middle of a housing crisis. And again, like you said, this is a city of renters. So this question is gonna impact us severely, right? Like regardless of whether it passes or not this is an important question that everyone should be aware of. So having this opportunity to talk about it again is super important and I'm happy to take advantage of it. I'm also gonna support a no vote on it. I think that keeping rents down or controlling rents is something that we all need to be really acutely or rather keenly aware of because as these things get out of control it will just trickle down to all these other layers that impact our housing crisis. So that's key. Number two, I hear when landlords say that they've kept the tenant for a long time and they've not increased rents that they're being nice or they're playing good landlord roles and then they get stuck with having to increase it significantly when they have a new tenant. So I think most tenants don't mind a small gradual increase year over year but getting hit over the head with this massive increase just like if you were looking for an apartment right now that's not, no one can do that. And then on top of that you were talking about servers and workers in our city. I've heard already so many people who work downtown and just the cost of parking alone is unattainable. What they make in one day of work is usually at least 50% of what they have to pay is just to park outside to be at work. So you're already cutting, the margins are really, really short for renters in this city. You know, it's difficult to get by just the day of work like I explained. Let alone come home and find out that you can't afford your rent or that you have to look now and surely there isn't anything affordable here because of the way that landlords have set the plate that they can increase it without any like limits. So this doesn't seem to be a fair policy. I would like to see, you know, I wanna try to consider what is it that the landlords are thinking is important and why they think this is, you know, the rent control is an issue for them. I think that, you know, they're running a business, right? They're, what is it that you call them? They're house providers. They call themselves rental housing providers. I mean, to me, they're landlords. They're running a business, right? They have a house that they're renting and they're competing in the market, et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, they have a cost, they have a profit and loss that they have to keep track of, but I also have it in my business and I kind of work around the environment that I'm around and I bring my prices up every year and my clients, they're okay with it. And, you know, they understand that it's just like inflation and all the other factors that play into their budget plays into mine. But I don't take advantage of my clients. I don't say, hey, this year, you know what? All the tomatoes, 100% increase. Why? Because I feel like it, you know? So that doesn't to me seem like it's a fair way to engage as a business owner, as a landlord, or as a housing provider, or a house service provider. I can tell you one thing that I heard a representative for the landlord say, and that is that developers were calling him and saying, we aren't going to build in Portland if this ordinance passes. We will not be building in Portland. I'm not sure that we would hear that the same as maybe a commercial real estate broker or a landlord that owns many, many units. We know we need more housing, but we need more affordable housing. We need housing that people, you know, can live in. And as we see, there's housing being built constantly in Portland. Not a lot of it is affordable, though. And sometimes developers recently have paid a fine rather than include any affordable housing in their unit, which seems to me to be a kind of a sneaky way. I don't know why that loophole was introduced. That's not in our discussion today. But if you pass a thing that says, if you're going to build in Portland, you've got to allocate a certain percentage to affordable housing. And then you say, I'm not even going to attempt to do that. I'll just pay the fine. That doesn't create any housing when you pay the fine. Well, we did take some, you both took some flack because we are not a debate and we're not a forum. And I mean, I could play devil's advocate and play the landlord role if you want. I was a landlord once in my life and it was the worst experience in my life. I will never do it again. When I moved in with my husband, I still had a house and rather than sell it right away, I rented it for a while. But is, I mean, our show is not about debating and getting people in to represent both sides. We hear from the two of you because, well, you used to be new, fresh counselors. Now you're kind of jaded and kind of tired. Seasoned, yeah. You're halfway through. I'm more tired than I did in my first episode. But I think like, that part is hard too because people, yeah, we received a note that was kind of like, be nice or something, I don't know, something like that. And talk about maybe the benefits of the question, but I don't see any benefits of the question and I can only give you my answer from my lived experience of being a renter. So it's almost like, I'm sorry that we don't see eye to eye on this from landlord to tenant, but I've only been a tenant. I understand like the lens that I have. I understand the friends that I have had to see move out of the city because they can't afford it. People who have had their building sold, who are priced out by Airbnb's, who have nowhere to live. We have a housing crisis. We have an entire demographic of unhoused individuals with no places to go, our shelters are full. So I'm seeing it through this lens. And I think there was frustration around like, I need to see it from the perspective of a landlord, but I'm not sure how I'm able to do that when I have always been a tenant and I am on the lower end of like the privilege power dynamic. Like there's a power dynamic between landlords and tenants. There always is. They dictate how much we pay, how long we can stay in our apartment, whether or not we can stay in our apartment and that's just the reality of it. And that's just how it is written in like this system of housing. And so, I get that people are frustrated if they feel like maybe on the show like Roberto and I are aligned in this, which like we have not been aligned in every show. We obviously have different opinions and perspectives, but yeah, I think I'm really worried and concerned for myself as a renter and for the community of Portland that are renters that deserve to be here and are hanging by a thread. And with this passing of the question we'll undoubtedly not be able to live here anymore. I think, you know, I had, you know, the idea of us, you know, like you mentioned our November show last year, we had several ballot questions that we disagree. Yeah. And we had a pretty good conversation. Like I said, this is a good opportunity for us to talk about our experiences and the way that we, certainly what we hear from our constituents. I'll do this though, you know, to be, not to be even, that was advocate, but what I understand is part of the landlord's plight is that, you know, which I think we've had conversations about citizen's initiatives. Once they get passed, you know, they cannot be amended by any other means other than by citizen's initiatives. So if they feel like they don't have any other avenue and they see something's wrong with it, you know, they're using the tools that are at their disposal. And if that's their grievance, you know, that they don't have any other tool, then yeah, okay, I see it and I'll give them that. And Tuesday, voters will have a chance to then have their opinion on what they think is the best policy for the city. So is that the explanation of why, you know, a political group that has been very anti-referendum and say you can't govern by these citizens' referendums, there's too many of them, it's too easy to get them on, they're always very much against them. Now they have a referendum. It's, I mean, it is, and it's really troubling because you start to, you know, we've talked, we've had some really good conversations and maybe in the next show we should probably dive into the citizens' initiative process in chapter nine because we've had some good conversations about that being a really important piece of democracy. And Tori speaks often, and I don't wanna speak for her, but about there's a reason that we've seen so many citizens' initiatives and is that there's a large segment of the community that does not feel that they're being engaged with their counselors and their elected officials and so they have to take on their own to put these ballot measures. And so I think that there's a lot, again, that we should discuss about that, but being unhappy about the way that voters have turned out is very different than being unhappy about the way that the council is working. You know, voters speak, and then even I as a council, I have to respect it. And we're having a conversation about how long the council has to wait to amend a citizens' initiative after it's passed. I'm comfortable with shortening that time, but I'm not comfortable with us making like substantive changes to policy. I think it'll be some of the operational pieces of some of the, how does this work into a specific department so that things are aligned? And I think some of that work happens much like we did with the language of the ballot question. It happens before it's even there. So the city clerk's office will work with the folks that are bringing whatever initiative to make sure that it's aligned with current policies. How is it gonna create a brand new department that then has to be put through a budget? And then now we're like, I don't know where the button is gonna come from. So these things I think could be improved so that that piece of, that important democratic process piece is maintained. But right now, which is a long, long way to get here. Like now it seems like it's being used as it's being weaponized, right? It's being used to attack the science that say, vote yes on A, defeat the essay. What does that tell me about rent control? That's two political ideologies going at it and putting it in a long sign. Like that's not helpful for dialogue. That's not constructive, in my opinion. Certainly not as constructive as we're being right now in this show. Sorry. How the reins of power do not give it up willingly or happily. And so when the democratic process is happening and the voters in Portland consistently for years now have voted in very progressive measures, right? Rank choice voting, rent control. And so you either like the democratic process or you don't like the democratic process. But you can't say, well, I like it when the outcome that I wanted happens. Exactly, yeah, that's been the top part. One and the other. I think that ultimately that's a really good way to frame, and even now as we're having this discussion, that's a really good way to frame it. Like even if you don't like the questions that are being put out there or the people that are putting out there, everyone is letting you know how they feel about it. So your community is sort of kind of letting you know, we're okay with this. Or we're strongly in support of this. So if we're then gonna pick and choose which ones we like, then we're picking and choosing whether we agree with our community or not. So let's be really careful about that. Anybody wanna make a prediction about the outcome of question A before we move on? There is one other thing on the ballot and we will talk about it. But it doesn't need as much attention. What do you think's gonna happen? Will it pass or not? I don't know. You know, I think it's tough. There's, they've raised over $140,000. That's a significant amount of money to put into getting a question to pass. I think it'll be really close. But again, we're a city of renters. And so I think if people go out and again, it's tough because this is the time where it's an off-election year. It's a June election. I think there's still a lot of people that are like, wait, there's an election on Tuesdays because people are thinking only in November. So as long as everybody gets out to vote and we have the demographic of renters that I know that we have that are passionate and care about this, you know, I could see it not passing, but I think it really just depends on the numbers that we have going through the polls that day. And I really have no idea. So it's all about getting out the vote. Yeah, definitely. I think my sense just from what I've heard from folks, there's, people are aware of the housing crisis. People are aware that number one, that this is a city of renters, right? Like these things are no longer kind of like hidden truths about Portland. They're like out there. And the idea of rents not being controlled scares people. So my sense is that a lot of folks, just by being cautious, are not going to support this because they think it's a really, they're starting to understand how delicate the housing crisis is and how policy can really be detrimental in the long term. So I think people are being more cautious. And my sense is that it's not gonna pass. You don't think so? I don't think so, no. But I'm not gonna call that a prediction because then I'll feel so guilty. I'm gonna get off my wall. I didn't do that. So I, but that's my sense. Well, let's move on to the other item on the ballot, which is always a June election with low turnout and it's the school budget. It's kind of a good news year for the school budget because it came in lower than was originally predicted. My understanding is the state made an error originally in telling the school district how much money they would get. And then they came back and said, oh, we were wrong, you're getting more. And it passed as we discussed in the last show, the council passed it easily onto the voters. So reasons to vote yes on the school budget. You should always vote yes on the school budget. Schools are systematically underfunded across the board. Every penny that goes into a school either ends up in a teacher's salary or in a student getting services. There's no wasting money in schools, right? Like we know that they're scrapping for every last bit of change. So I'm always going to support it. Especially now, the influx of families that are requiring support for language, integration into the school system, language support, obviously all the new impersonal NFTs that are added to provide these services. The schools honestly, I don't want to say blank check, but whatever they say they need, I'm going to say that yes, take it. Because again, history of being underfunded and under-resourced, and that's, yeah, that's not happening. And again, the ballot box is not the place. Walking in to vote is not the place to express your displeasure about school budget. There's a lot of time along the process to express your displeasure about spending money on that or under, there is that whole process. When it comes down to, okay, now I'm in there and I can mark yes or no, I agree with you. I would always mark yes. Yeah, yeah, I agree with everything that was said. And I think the only thing I'll add is that schools are such a reflection of the community that you live in and the community is a reflection of the schools. And so we have a really wonderful city here. And I think that is because of the tone of the schools. And I think like it's always going to impact the people that live here. So I hear like, well, I don't have kids in the school system. Like is that, is the school budget still something that I should really care about? And it absolutely is. So yeah, I'm in full support of it. I hope that it passes. And I was really happy to see that it was easy for us this year and the council supported it unanimously. And so I'm hopeful that it will pass on Tuesday as well. Great. Well, absentee voting has already started. So when we say the election is on Tuesday, it really means it ends Tuesday. It's already underway. So people that don't wanna vote on Tuesday or can't can go down and do that. A family member of mine who recently moved to Portland tried to tell me that they weren't registered to vote yet. And I said, oh, it's me. It's same day registration. You can walk in, register to vote, and you know, vote right in that moment. So I know that Juneau is gonna make sure that her dad gets down to the polls to vote. It's a busy time moving and so forth. But there's so many benefits that my grandchildren who already lived in Portland and the ones that will be starting in the fall, I just love the school system here. I've been so impressed with it. It's warm and it's supportive and it's intelligent. I noticed that there's talk again about merging the two high schools or looking into creating one big modern high school. Both the high schools are like 100 years old. That's not on the school budget vote this time, but there are a lot of needs. There are a lot of physical plant needs in addition to human needs in schools. So... We should actually, since we have a few minutes, big shout out to all the graduates this year because graduation ceremonies just happened this week. So Portland High School just had, I think there was 202nd graduation ceremony during high school had theirs and Casco Bay had their 15th ceremony. And I think Portland Adult Ed had theirs as well. So yeah, big shout out, congratulations to all the seniors and all the graduates. And our producer here, yeah. Congratulations. We could not do the show. Graduated, yes, he's been in high school the whole time. That's right. And we were also helped by Shay on tech today. We could not have done it without you, Shay. Thank you so much. And viewers, we can't do it without you. Let us hear from you. When counselors Pelletier and Rodriguez hear from someone saying, well, are you gonna have the landlord point of view too? This isn't a debate show. It's not, you know, point counterpoint. That's not the format, but we love to hear from viewers and residents of Portland about what's on your mind. What would you like to hear us talk about? You can lob questions at us. And we're always happy to respond to the public. Thanks for watching the show. Without the audience, we wouldn't have a show. We are now a podcast. We're on two platforms. We're on Spotify and we're on Apple Podcast. This is our 11th show. Second season, 11th show. So the whole archive, you can see it on the Portland Media Center website, or you can go to their YouTube channel and see all the past shows. It's kind of fun watching the old shows, isn't it? Thinking, oh my gosh, we were out there. I didn't have any gray hairs, that was good. That's right, we were in the front window. Some people walking by. So, well, I know that you guys have grown into your roles quite a bit. And I really look forward to speaking with you each month. We have this time slot now. So the second Friday of every month will be Pathways to Progress going forward. And thank you so much for joining us this evening.