Updated 2/7/2025
By Nancy English
With dedicated rent control staff and going on five years of experience, City of Portland landlords and tenants are gaining clarity on how to navigate its rent control ordinance, first approved by voters in 2020 and updated in 2022.
Housing Safety Manager Zachary Lenhert said Portland staff review long term rental registrations for rent increases that exceed 10 percent. The ordinance prohibits larger increases unless the unit is otherwise exempt.
Former mayor Ethan Strimling, who with the Maine Democratic Socialists of America campaigned for the rent control citizen initiatives, asked if this would be a slanted article. From Strimling’s adversarial perspective, the city should still be doing far more to make landlords compliant. But Lenhert said fines, which Strimling and others want imposed, are in civil matters corrective and not punitive. “The office only seeks compliance,” Lenhert said. “We want any money owed sent back to tenants.”
Landlords can most simply raise their rents based on what the Housing Safety Office announces on September 1st as allowable rent increases for the following year. They base the allowable increase on 70 percent of the regional Consumer Price Index increase. Also, if a new tenant has moved in, a landlord may increase the rent by five percent. That is as long as the previous tenant left voluntarily.
Rent Control Exception – General Assistance
In 2023, Aaron Flacke, a 15-year resident of an apartment on Briggs Street, received a 90-day notice of eviction. “I was very lucky and found a place to move to,” Flacke said. Within a short time, Flacke saw the apartment that he had rented for $1,172 in November 2023 offered for $2,045 a month.
Flacke contacted the city about the violation. He later learned the 1,300-square-foot two-bedroom unit was being rented to a tenant with a General Assistance housing subsidy. This makes it exempt from the rent control ordinance.
The new owner, Chris Faulhaber, bought the Briggs Street building in mid-2023. “The properties under rent control are wildly under market rate,” Faulhaber said. “We offered it for subsidized housing and I was able to level out the expenses on that building.” Faulhaber lives in a four-unit he owns, also exempt from rent control.
Rent Control Exception – Capital Improvements
Landlords must submit rent increase applications for review by the Rent Board to recoup money invested in capital improvements. Landlords may “bank” these additional rent increases and add them into rent increases annually until used.
At the December 18th, 2024 hearing, the Rent Board heard one such rent increase application for a two-unit on Deering Avenue owned by Anna Kuperman and Marine Kuperman-Beade. The 31-page application detailed the capital improvements typically allowed and what did not qualify. Tenants had been notified of the hearing, but none objected.
Rent Board members discussed a $1,400 expense listed as a manager service for help finding and leasing the unit to a tenant. One of the tenants on the board found the expensive excessive. Ultimately, the landlord’s request for $543.00 increase per month – covering extensive renovations including a new boiler, partial roof, water heater, and much more – was reduced to $505.00 by the board.
That “banked” amount may be applied to monthly rents in addition to the CPI increase, as long as the increase does not exceed 10 percent annually. Nonexempt unit rents are listed in the city’s citizen self-service database under “More Info” for each long-term rental license.
Rent Control & Noncompliance
Of 147 cases initiated by Housing Safety in 2024, 15 violations remain as of January 2025 for 200 rental units, many in buildings owned under various entities by Geoffrey Rice and managed by Apartment Mart, with an office in the Trelawny Building. The Trelawny Tenants’ Union, with Strimling as a founding member, has filed multiple complaints against Rice. Over the years Rice issued multiple checks refunding rent increases to tenants.
A September 2024 rent board complaint from the tenants’ union asserted “substantial noncompliance” by landlord Geoffrey Rice. If confirmed by the Rent Board, the landlord would not be allowed to receive any rent increases, according to Strimling, resulting in more than $12,000 in refunds. The complaint also seeks more than $60,000 in fines. Rice’s attorney offered to attempt to resolve the matter and a decision was postponed. No resolution has been agreed to as of now, Strimling said.
“Anyone can assert the rights of tenants,” Strimling said, and the tenants’ union is doing that for all Geoffrey Rice-owned rentals, which is “between 300 and 400 units in 30 buildings.”
“I think rent control has done a great job of keeping landlords from gouging,” Strimling said. “But there are a lot of landlords who are not being audited.” He said the city is not following up with landlords, for example when a unit is listed with $0 rent. “The city is very complaint driven, but they don’t have anywhere near the staff that is needed to follow up. It has improved a little.”
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that an apartment on Briggs Street was advertised for $3000 per month. The advertised amount of rent has been corrected. The correct amount is $2045 according to ad copy for the advertised unit.
