Well , hi everybody . I'm Bill Bateman , part of the team here at OSTA . We are the Oregon State Tenants Association and we're supporting manufactured and floating home communities . In this broadcast , we're going to begin a new series called Inside OSTA , where you get an opportunity to meet the people behind the scenes . Don't know if you're aware of it , but we are an all-volunteer organization who donates our time and energy to making things just a little bit better for all tenants , including people in the manufactured and floating home communities . So come on in and let's get started .
Bill BatemanWell , welcome in . I have two sections for you , so two more episodes coming up . Our guest today is Matthew Johnson . He is an attorney and he is a member of our board member of our board . Now , I've got two episodes because we went long and had some good information and I wanted to make sure we had time to discuss things in detail . Now , let's make sure we're not confusing anybody here . Matthew is a member of our board , he is not our attorney and he does not represent the board or our membership . I just want to be clear . So , without too much more explanation , let's use a music bumper and be transported to our interview . Well , okay , we are back , and right now . I have a special guest today , one of my team members at OSTA . He is on the board with me and this is Matthew Johnson , and he is an attorney at law . Welcome , thank you for coming on today .
Matthew JohnsonThank you , Bill .
Bill BatemanWhy don't you tell us a little bit about yourself , your background in law and some of the things you deal with on a day-to-day basis ?
Matthew JohnsonSure , I graduated from law school in 96 . I was an older student , I think I was 40 at the time . I've been practicing law since then , here in Eugene mostly . I spent a couple of years abroad practicing law in Micronesia .
Bill BatemanWow .
Matthew JohnsonDuring law school I worked at Legal Aid the first year . They don't let you work at all . But as soon as I finished my first year of law school I worked that summer at Legal Aid here in Lane County , oregon . When school started again , I of course only worked part-time because I was going to school . I did that all through school , my third year . We have in Oregon what's called a third-year certified law student , which means that I was able to practice with close supervision of an attorney .
Matthew JohnsonMostly what I did at my time at Legal Aid was landlord-tenant issues and they of course represent tenants . When I graduated from law school I wasn't sure what I wanted to do . I was married to a woman who was a partner at a big corporate firm here in town . I knew I didn't want to do that , so initially I just volunteered at Legal Aid , continued doing landlord-tenant stuff . Eventually I opened my own practice . I got an office , bought some office equipment , a telephone and basically I was an adjunct to legal aid . I knew all the attorneys there . I knew the guy who sort of referred out stuff .
Matthew JohnsonBack then if you went to legal aid , you would call up , you'd make an appointment . You'd get an appointment two weeks later , 10 days , two weeks later , and a lot of people would come into legal aid and they had gotten an eviction notice and they had a hearing coming up in a couple of days and legal aid would say well , you know , we can make an appointment for you in two weeks . And so I became the go-to guy . When they would get something like that , they'd say well , here , call Matthew , he'll be ready to go to trial in a day and a half . And so that was the beginning of my practice . It was almost exclusively short-term referrals from legal aid , people that needed an attorney because they had a trial coming up in a couple of days . And so that's what I did . I sort of built up from that . I did some other other stuff .
Matthew JohnsonI had a background as a union organizer . I wanted to represent unions , but most of the unions here in Eugene go to the big firms in Portland . I did represent the stagehands union at the performing arts center here in Eugene for a number of years , but it just you know , my bread and butter became landlord tenant . In the late nineties I encountered Osta . Back then it was Fred and Pat Schwach were Osta .
Matthew JohnsonThey were tenants in a park , they had an RV . They traveled around the state and just visited parks the two of them and recruited members , and when they weren't doing that , when the legislature was in session , they lived in Salem . They were very effective lobbyists . They sort of hired me on a retainer . I think they paid me $250 a month and I was their reference person . Back then . There were a lot of hosted chapters around the state and part of the deal was that any chapter president that had a question could just call me up and I would answer their questions . I did that for a number of years . Like I said , I left the country in 2002 , practiced law in the Republic of Palau , which is in Micronesia . It's a tropical island .
Matthew JohnsonI still miss it . The air temperature day and night was 85 degrees . The water temperature was about 82 degrees . It was a very nice place to live .
Matthew JohnsonI practiced sort of I represented an agency of the national government for land tenure issues , so it was related to landlord-tenant but different . Anyway , I came back in 05 , reopened my practice . I sort of gave up the idea that I was going to be a union lawyer and I have done a little bit of employment stuff , discrimination , housing discrimination as well , but basically my bread and butter is landlord-tenant . My experience back in the late 90s with Osta and Pat and Fred , I sort of got to be an expert on park law . It's a little different , not a lot , but there are some differences between just regular apartment housing tenants who don't own the home and people who live in parks who generally own their homes Right . So you know there's not a major difference but there are some differences . And so shortly after I reopened my practice in 05 , I was recruited by someone on the board of OSTA to join the board . So I've been on the OSTA board since I don't know , maybe 06 . I really don't remember .
Bill BatemanWell , you are well qualified to speak on the subject , sir . That's great .
Matthew JohnsonYeah , well qualified to speak on the subject , sir , that's great . Yeah , so so anyway , that's why I I used to um do a lot more litigation than I do now . I I tried cases in washington county and deschutes county in , uh , douglas county . I even did a remote hearing once in I think it was umatilla county it was a .
Matthew JohnsonThere was a park , little park , in umatilla , and out in the boondocks there . Sometimes it's more like the 60s when it comes to landlord tenant law , which in the 60s there was no landlord tenant law and and sort of the attitude was you know , it's my park , I can do whatever . Whatever I want , I have the power . So anyway , yeah , I have a lot of experience with parks . That is not where most of my clients come from . Most of my clients are , again , just tenants in apartment buildings , homes .
Bill BatemanWhat are some of the big issues that we're seeing ? What are the problems ? Because I know there's been a change in the last few years and I'm hearing more and more about problems in mobile home or manufactured home parks , as far as rents , as far as people losing their equity , as far as trying to form associations and getting retaliated against .
Well , there's a couple of issues . The big one , of course , is rents and rent increases . It was only a few years ago and it was credit the landlords in Portland for creating the crisis and rent increases , and they were just screwing over renters in the Portland area and people got pretty upset . The result was probably I believe Oregon is still the only state with rent control Some people refer to it as a rent cap . There are some problems with it that weren't initially addressed , one being , you know , back then , when the inflation rate was one or two percent , three percent , you put a cap of 77 , I believe it was plus , whatever the inflation rate was . You know , when the inflation rate is really low , it's reasonable . But what happened is we had then , right after that , we had a couple of years of just outrageous inflation , and so that allowed them to go to the max . So that's one issue . The other issue that's particular in well , it's not particular just to parks , but it maybe has more impact and that's the rent reset issue . And that is when a tenant moves moves from a park , moves from an apartment building the landlords can . They're not constrained by the rent cap . They can increase the rents as much as they want . What that means is that people get captured . I mean not that people in parks are already sort of captured , because the landlords control who you sell it to . But what happens is that someone wants to move out of a park , sell their home Nobody wants to buy it when there's going to be a 25% rent increase . That certainly impacts the resale value of the home and anybody's equity in their home . Because , again , who's going to want to buy a home when the rent is about to go up by 25 , 30% ? People lose equity in their homes that way because it just doesn't keep the value when the rents go up like that . It is also a problem if you're an apartment dweller , because when you move out of your apartment , that apartment the rent's going to go way up and some people say , well , gee , you're moving out . What do you care ? What the renter in an apartment cares is that when they go to find another apartment somebody else has just moved out of and their rent's going to double , and so that makes a renter in an apartment not want to leave . They're stuck there because if I try to go somewhere else , there's no limit on the rent increase I'm going to be facing . It's a really critical issue , both for people in parks because it affects their equity in their homes , but it's also an issue for people who just rent apartments or homes . They got to go somewhere else and they're going to be facing that unlimited rent increase in their new rental . I think it's a problem . I think it's hopefully will be addressed in the coming legislative session . I know there are legislators that are aware of this issue and are going to deal with it . So that brings me to another part of your question about what has changed over the years .
Matthew JohnsonWhen I started dealing with parks in the 90s , a lot of the parks certainly around Eugene and I know a lot of the state were owned and operated by , if I can say this , old white men who had basically built these parks in the 60s and 70s themselves . They bought a piece of land just outside of the city limits of Springfield and they put in all the utilities and did all that . They lived in the park , they did all the maintenance in the park , they took care of the trees . Nobody had to sue them . There wasn't any law that said they had to maintain a hazardous tree . They did it . They took care of the carports , everything . If you were an elder person , the owner would come and and the owners lived in the parks . They knew everybody that lived there . Everybody knew the owner . If you had a problem you could call the owner up . The owner would come down and take care of the problem . And that was sort of the situation in the 90s .
Matthew JohnsonIn the 90s , and what happened Is that these old white guys Got even older and decided they wanted to retire and sell . And there was suddenly these Investment companies Most of them not from Oregon , coming in , in fact , most of them from California Coming in and offering these guys Just you know , incredible amounts of money to buy these parks . And these investors saw the parks as just a gold mine that they could just keep taking money out of . They didn't have to put any money into it . And so what has happened over the years since the turn of the century , is that more and more of these parks have been bought up by large corporations or investment groups or whatever , and the owner doesn't live in the park anymore . Owners don't care about the park . They don't care about the people that live there . It's just an income stream . That's all it is to them .
Matthew JohnsonAnd another issue is that a lot of these parks again were built in the 60s and 70s and now they are 30 , 40 , 50 years old and you know the reason or care to invest their incredible windfall profits into fixing up these parks and repairing the infrastructure . And what they have found is that they can get away with it , that most of their tenants are not wealthy people . They are people on fixed income , poor people . You know this is a low cost alternative to home ownership and so this is not the wealthy part of our society . These are the poor people and these are people who can't afford attorneys , who can't drag these landlord corporations into court and say you know , you have an obligation to repair the infrastructure .
Matthew JohnsonYou know the sidewalks are crumbling . You need to fix that . You know the recreation building that's , you know , got a leaky roof . You can't just tear it down . You can't just close it down . You can't just fill in the swimming pool with dirt because it's got a leak and needs to be fixed . You have to repair these things . You know there's no enforcement . You know we've got these great well , semi-great laws , landlord-tenant laws but the only way to enforce those laws is by private action , by hiring an attorney and going through the long , expensive process of suing them , and , in the end , if a judge who is more likely to be a landlord than a tenant decides that you lose , you can end up paying tens of thousands of dollars to the landlord's attorneys , and so it's very intimidating to try and take on these large corporations and force them to do what the law requires them to do . And it's getting worse and worse as fewer and fewer of the parks in this state are owned by people who give a hoot about the tenants or about maintaining the property .
Bill BatemanIt's kind of a bad situation if you're looking at the parks and you're looking at what we're seeing today . We had a problem on our park . The swimming pool turned lime green . It was awful . It had dead rats , it had maggots , mosquito , larvae in it and this is the third year in a row it's happened . Now we've had a rent increase every year but we haven't seen any new maintenance . So this is a familiar story , I think , all over the state . Is that a fair statement ?
Matthew JohnsonThat is exactly what I'm talking about , bill .
Matthew JohnsonAgain , there are these laws that say that the landlords are supposed to maintain these facilities but there's no enforcement , there's no way to force them to do that , unless you go out and spend tens of thousands of dollars to hire an attorney and initiate a lawsuit .
Matthew JohnsonThat will , you know , minimum between , for instance , here in lane county , you file a lawsuit on january 1st and if you have a trial before , you know , de December 31st , you're lucky . So it's not only expensive but it's time consuming and there needs to be some sort of enforcement . And again , you know some of the penalties and particularly , it's interesting the section of the Oregon Landlord and Tenant laws that deals just with parks came into existence I don't know 15 , 20 years after the first Landlord-Tenant Act and the penalties are so much less in that section . And you know , clearly , park lobbyists got in there , were able to limit some of the damages . So you know , even if you can prove that the landlord has failed to do their duty , you know it's a $300 fee . You know that's for some of these it's a $300 fee . You know that's for some of these large corporations , you know they spend 10 times that just to .
Bill BatemanIt's a lunch order .
Matthew JohnsonRight for lunch for their corporate meetings . So it's just , I mean sure I know what the solution is that we somehow authorize the Attorney General's Office to enforce these laws and to bring these lawsuits against these deadbeat landlords . You know , put some teeth into these consequences and make them disgorge some of these . Just incredible . I mean these parks are absolute gold mines . I mean these parks are absolute gold mines . They are just taking money out of these parks , hand over fist and putting very minimal , minimal about . I mean , oftentimes anymore there's not even a manager in a park . There'll be one manager for three or four parks and so that just , just again limits their , their cost . They're just , they're just taking all that money from all those people in the park and they are just and spreading it to their shareholders you know , share dividends , and they're not even paying somebody to be in the park to sort of care .
Bill BatemanYou want to add to that ? We've had reports of threats and intimidation . One person was told they were going to be evicted if they complained , which I believe is illegal .
Matthew JohnsonOh yeah , it's absolutely illegal .
Bill BatemanIf we don't like the swimming pool , they're just going to fill it in . And if we keep complaining about the air conditioning in the clubhouse . They're going to tear it down .
That is all illegal , and what can we do ? So there's Exactly .
Matthew JohnsonYou know what can you do ? Well , you can hire an attorney and you can file a lawsuit and go through that expense and that year long process and you know , and what do you get in a $300 fine for ? You know , go through that expense and that year long process and you know , and what do you get in a $300 fine for you , know , and so something needs to .
Bill BatemanSomething needs to change . I believe Something needs to change indeed . Well , this looks like a good point to step away . We'll be back with another episode very soon and pick things up from this point with a look at some of the problems happening right now in your community , with our special guest , Matthew Johnson . Board member of OSTA . We have some links in the front section If you'd like more information about OSTA , if you'd like to join , we'd love to have you , and if you'd like to subscribe and make sure you're getting all the information , we'll have information on how to get our newsletter as well . That's it for this week . Be safe , Stay cool .