Big landlords are using AI software that secretly feeds them competitors' and tenants’ private data to push everyone's rent up at once. It’s time to end the collusion and return to a natural free market!

Problem: A growing number of landlords use AI rent-fixing software, such as RealPage. This type of software takes in private data from competing landlords and recommends rent increases across a whole market, which destroys healthy competition that's supposed to protect renters. The White House Council of Economic Advisers estimated this kind of algorithmic pricing cost renters roughly $3.8 billion in a single year, and in the Portland–Vancouver metro alone tens of thousands of units are managed by landlords using it.

Solution: Ban the sale and use of algorithmic rent-coordination software in Springfield. Portland has already passed laws which target price-coordination tools while explicitly leaving ordinary property management and accounting software alone. Oregon's statewide version (SB 722) died in committee, so it’s time to act locally!

Benefits: This law restores genuine competition, ensuring that landlords are incentivized to set their own prices. While current rents may not lower from policy passage, this helps decrease the rate of rent increases tenants will experience in the future.

Setting a reasonable limit to rental application fees and deposits will help reduce the sky-high move-in costs which are currently keeping Springfield tenants out of homes they can otherwise afford monthly.

Problem: The biggest barrier to getting housed often isn't the monthly rent, it's the wall of upfront cash required. First month’s rent, a massive security deposit, sometimes last month’s rent and pet deposits, on top of $25-75 application fees paid again and again to every landlord you apply with. Oregon law provides some structure requiring that landlords charges reasonable fees, but that doesn’t protect tenants from the total burden across a dozen applications in today’s competitive housing market. These overinflated move-in costs can shut out a working family that could easily make the monthly rent payment otherwise.

Solution: A cap on application fees at $20 per adult applicant, and limiting the total security deposit to no more than 2 month's rent (with an exception to charge 3 months for a ‘second-chance’ applicant who doesn’t meet the screening criteria)

Benefits: Tenants have more incentive to apply to rentals in Springfield, and can then afford to apply to more units, making them more likely to find & get housing. Security deposit caps help ensure better affordability while the additional month exception provides opportunities for landlords and tenants to negotiate if there are housing barriers.

This isn’t a novel policy: New York, California, Eugene, and Philadelphia also have rental application fee caps, while Massachusetts and Vermont prohibit application fees altogether. More than half of US states already have some limit on security deposits but Oregon as a whole does not.