Bill Bateman 0:00

Well , hi everybody . I'm Bill Bateman , part of the team here at OSTA , the Oregon State Tenants Association , and this is part two of my Inside OSTA series , where we have an opportunity to meet the members of the board and find out a little bit more about them and what makes them tick . This is part two of my interview with board member Matthew Johnson . When we last left , we were discussing the growing concerns in the community . In this session , we're going to look a little more deeply into the problems and the solutions . Let's join the interview already in progress .

Mathew Johnson 0:45

Yeah , no , I dealt with a few years back this . It was a couple , it was a white woman , hispanic man . The white woman went to the park buying a home , went through the whole thing . The park manager said , okay , well , you know , come back tomorrow with your husband , we'll sign all the paperwork . Said , okay , well , you know , come back tomorrow with your husband , we'll sign all the paperwork . And she showed up with her husband who was hispanic , who was a american citizen , um , had a job , and I mean you know . And the manager threw the papers in the garbage can and said I'll burn that trailer down before I'll let that oh my particular epithet move into this park and you know , I don't .

Mathew Johnson 1:28

I think that there was some kind of settlement um sent them immediately to boley , which is the state representative for the ee , the national federal eeoc , equal opportunity , and Boley investigates housing discrimination .

Bill Bateman 1:47

Right .

Mathew Johnson 1:49

And so I believe that there was an investigation , and I believe they found reasonable cause to believe that there had been housing discrimination . I don't know .

Bill Bateman 1:57

Well , now I know that one of the things OSTA does is help people through forming different types of associations .

Mathew Johnson 2:05

Yes .

Bill Bateman 2:06

And I just worked on an article a little bit ago last week in fact about some changes . It used to be the Committee of Seven was the end-all be-all for folks to deal with associations , and it seems that is not the case anymore . The law has changed . There's other alternatives . Can you help us out with that ?

Mathew Johnson 2:27

Well , I need to correct your statement . The Committee of Seven has been around forever . It has never been the end-all , be-all . In fact it's never been much of anything . They've never been very effective . In my experience and like I said , I've been doing this for 30 years I've helped many a tenant committee , tenant association form around the state and in fact back in the late nineties I used to offer a service . I would travel anywhere in the state , do a two-hour presentation to any group or tenant association . I used to charge $75 for that .

Bill Bateman 3:10

Oh , wow .

Mathew Johnson 3:12

I know , and I don't even think I charge for gas or anything , and so I did that around the state , I did that over . I remember going to Redmond , I remember going to Roseburg , the Ashland area , a couple times down there , Washington County Anyway . So the Committee of Seven was a rare thing and very seldomly done what I saw . So there's OSTA . We used to have a lot of chapters around the state . We'd get a certain amount of members in a park and I think it was 10% , and then it could form a chapter and have officers . So that was one type of tenant association and probably at one time that was the most common tenant association around the state . But a lot of parks just form their own associations , just on their own , they just got together .

Mathew Johnson 4:13

They are recognized in the statute . If you have a former tenant association in your park you can give a one-page description to the management and they have to give that copy of that to every new potential tenant in the park . So the statute has always recognized tenant associations , whether or not they were committees of seven . The committees of seven have one thing that just a regular independent tenant committee doesn't have , and that is the right to request that the landlord meet with them once a year , listen to their concerns and then , after that meeting , committee of Seven can send a list of those concerns to the landlord and the landlord is supposed to reply . Now if the landlord refuses to meet with the Committee of Seven , you know , again we're back to hiring an attorney filing a lawsuit . If the landlord fails to bond to the written list of concerns , again there's really not much recourse for the tenants . And also , what does it mean to respond to your concerns ? A landlord can write back a letter and say I don't give a crap about your concerns .

Mathew Johnson 5:37

That's a response , Technically responded right Landlord has complied with the statute , so that having that so-called advantage to force a landlord to meet with you is really meaningless . And what has been the tendency that I've seen over and over again is that when a group of tenants form a committee of seven and they sort of go through these motions of demanding the meeting and maybe the landlord meets with them and they send the letter and maybe the landlord response , their feeling is that's it , that's all we can do , that's all the statute requires us to do , and so that's the end .

Bill Bateman 6:20

Comes apart and kind of fails .

Mathew Johnson 6:22

Cause and they , you know , and they feel like , well , that was a waste of time . And so you know , my experience is that it's just not . It's just not a way to go , not something worthy of spending time on , unless . So again , what I so there there are several different kinds of tenant associations you can have in the have in the park and , as I mentioned , you can have a , a Osta chapter , but you know , the officers , the voting people in that are only the Oster members and the rest of the park is not included in that . I mean , they can certainly come to the meetings , they can listen , they can offer their input , but as far as voting on anything or being president , you have to be an Oster member . So that's one type .

Mathew Johnson 7:05

And then there's what I would refer to as an independent , which is just one formed in a park by the people there . These have been , in my experience again , the most effective out there because they don't feel like they're relying on BOSTA or someone else to do their bidding . And usually these ones , these stronger ones , are in bigger parks . They tend to be maybe a little more affluent parks where people have more time , maybe they're a higher percentage of people with higher educations . But these independent committees have been effective many times around the state , bringing lawsuits or just bringing pressure on landlords organizing , organizing an entire park again , whereas an osta chapter tends to be mostly just the osta members and the other people in the park may not feel they have quite the quite stick in the fire or whatever .

Bill Bateman 8:16

Whereas these represented I think we just formed the I guess we're talking about the unaffiliated tenant committee . We just did that here in the park and there had been previous chapters that had experienced exactly what you're talking about . They they met , they got five or seven people together and one guy and one gal did all the work and then it all fell apart and they said why am I paying this money to this organization and ABCDEF ? We invited everybody , we got 50% of the people to sign into the association and we just we dropped off the things for the new tenants and the stuff like that . The new managers are kind of like oh we're from Washington , is this the law ? I said , yeah , we'll sign you up for some courses , which is another thing I guess we can help them with . So I really like this as an approach . Everybody feels more included , they feel heard and we're already seeing some changes in the existing list of problems .

Mathew Johnson 9:15

Well , and so here's what I've seen is that then , having this structure and this organization already there , tenant association , you can also then form , as maybe a subgroup or just another group , a committee of seven .

Bill Bateman 9:35

Exactly .

Mathew Johnson 9:36

So that then you could demand this meeting with the landlord and go in and have this whole other organization behind you and realize that when you get nothing I mean I'm not going to say all landlords treat that meeting as just a waste of their time , but a lot of them do- and again , if you get that from your landlord , it doesn't mean that your organization falls apart , because that's not the end-all , be-all of your organization .

Mathew Johnson 10:11

You still have your tenant association , and so you know . That's the way . I encourage parks to organize their tenant associations and I think that Osta needs to rethink the chapter kind of format . In the past , again , Pat and Fred would go to a park and they'd spend a week there and they would get half the people in the park to join Osta and that was different . But we just don't have a retired couple who has nothing . Well , I don't want to say nothing better to do , because clearly that was a really good thing that Pat and Fred did Very valuable yeah .

Mathew Johnson 10:58

And it was awesome , but it required a full-time dedication on their part . And , like I said , when the legislature was in session , their park was in the Salem area and so they were in Salem and they were down in the halls of power there and they were making a difference . So I think OSTEP maybe needs to rethink the chapter idea , unless and until we can get another Fred and Pat who is willing to travel around the state year round and recruit members . And I'll tell you another thing that I . There's also the kinds of tenant associations that tend to revolve about social stuff Potlucks , garage sales , whatever , and again , those that were organized around those sorts of issues tend not to last either .

Bill Bateman 11:51

Right .

Mathew Johnson 11:51

Because you end up with the same sort of . You know the two people doing all the organizing and setting up and doing all that . You know the two people doing all the organizing and setting up and doing all that , but where I've seen the sort of social groups last is again where they're sort of a subcommittee of a larger group , like the one you saw and you know and and there's more people and you can rotate people in and out of that and make that work a lot better .

Bill Bateman 12:20

I just . People can get sick , people can go on vacation and visit their grandchildren , that type of thing , cause that's a real life thing .

Mathew Johnson 12:26

Well , and you know , and there's burnout . I mean if , if it's just one or two people doing it all , they get burned out and they get tired of doing it . And you know , to Fred and Pat's credit , pat's credit , I think they both kept doing it until they died , and I'm not sure I would suggest anybody do that .

Mathew Johnson 12:47

It's just hard to find anybody with that kind of dedication and willing to go to those extremes , and so people get burned out . And so the bigger , more inclusive your organization is , the better . The more diverse sort of activities you have going on , the better . So someone you know I mean someone wants to support your committee , wants to be part of it . It really just wants to . You know , help with garage sales and okay , that's fine , they can be part of your group .

Mathew Johnson 13:21

That does you know the bigger stuff , the , the lobbying work and the you know that work and and they can support that by maybe doing something different . Not necessarily that . And so I just you know that's a that can be a problem with a committee of seven because , again know that's like at the most seven people .

Bill Bateman 13:39

That's it .

Mathew Johnson 13:40

You know your organization . You can have a board of directors . You can have 25 people if you want .

Bill Bateman 13:46

Exactly .

Mathew Johnson 13:47

You can have 10 officers or whatever , and I just see that that's a much better way to sustain your organizing and your work and your advocacy . More people that have a stake , more you can get done and , again , the less burnout .

Bill Bateman 14:03

Okay , well , I know you are a busy person . Do you have any final thoughts for today ? Maybe we can get you back in a couple months and talk about some of the more advanced issues in a little more detail , but anything you want to wrap up today , anything that you feel needs a second pass , Well , you know , I would , I would encourage your listeners to you know , be informed , know what's going on .

Mathew Johnson 14:30

You know stuff , stuff is happening out there that you may or may not know of that that can have a real impact on your lives . And you know , I know , a lot of people are in parks , that live in parks , are retired I don't want to say older , because today I , by the way , bill today is my 70th birthday well , happy birthday , sir thank you .

Mathew Johnson 14:50

But I I know a lot of people are retired and they're they're tired . They worked all their lives and you know they want to have this time where they can just relax and , you know , go visit the grandchildren and not have to think too hard and not have to work too hard . But advice that doctors always give when you're retired is don't just sit around and do nothing . Get involved , get out there , do something , because you know you just sit there and don't do anything . Don't get involved , don't learn new stuff , don't care , you're not going to live very long .

Bill Bateman 15:23

You're going to fall behind , absolutely .

Mathew Johnson 15:26

So I would encourage everybody to get out there and get informed , get involved , care about your neighbors in some way or another . Help your neighbors and you know live longer .

Bill Bateman 15:40

Outstanding . Matthew , thank you so much for your time today . I appreciate it . We appreciate you in the OSTA boardroom . We appreciate you taking time out today and what you're doing on a day-to-day basis to help people all over the state . Thank you , sir .

Bill Bateman 15:56

You're welcome all over the state . Thank you , sir , you're welcome and once again , I want to thank board member Matthew Johnson and , in case you didn't hear my disclaimer the first time , matthew is a board member and an attorney , but not an attorney for OSTA . All board members , including myself , share our ideas , expertise , experience and information , but we do not provide legal advice . I want to keep that really clear and not give any misconceptions . Okay , there are links in the startup page for getting the newsletter , for subscribing to the podcast . There's a lot of good information . We hope you'll research the website . We hope you come by and we do hope you'll become a member , so click that membership link . Also , please share this with anyone who wishes to use it . Thanks for coming by . We'll have more very soon . Be safe and take care .