With a lack of housing in Oregon, rents have soared. (Getty Images)
Before they ever sign a lease, start packing boxes or line up moving day help, Oregonians hoping to move into a new rental home can spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on application fees and deposits.
Some Democratic Oregon lawmakers want to cut those costs. Lawmakers last week considered proposals to ban landlords from charging screening fees and charge landlords who take a holding deposit and then fail to actually rent the apartment, as well as a bill tenant advocates objected to that would allow landlords to charge monthly fees instead of a security deposit.
Nearly 37% of Oregonians rent their homes, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That’s higher than the national average, and renters are in the majority in cities including Eugene, Corvallis, Monmouth, Beaverton and Seaside.
And rents continue to increase. The real estate market Zillow pegs the average rent in February 2025 at nearly $1,800 monthly, up $30 from last year.
Rep. Annessa Hartman, D-Gladstone, introduced House Bill 3521 after hearing from renters across Oregon who lost hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars to holding deposits for apartments they couldn’t move into. In some cases, Hartman said, renters showed up to find homes rife with mold, broken plumbing or pest infestations but were told they would lose their deposit if they didn’t sign a lease. In other instances, renters found that the landlord accepted their deposit to hold the unit and then rented it to someone else.
“Tenants should not have to choose between signing a lease for an unsafe home or losing a significant amount of money,” Hartman said.
Landlords who spoke to the House Housing and Homelessness Committee about Hartman’s bill strongly disagreed with it. John Baker, who said he spoke on behalf of Oregon Realtors, said passing it would stop landlords from providing tenants the “favor” of keeping an apartment off the market in exchange for a holding deposit.
“The possible response of this bill, if enacted, is to no longer provide the favor to the tenant to hold the property until they’re ready, physically as well as financially, but instead require immediate execution of deposits and documents which may not be convenient or possible by the prospective tenant,” Baker said.
Other landlords said they’d be penalized for situations outside of their control, such as a flood or delayed repairs that take a unit off the market. But Rep. Pam Marsh, D-Ashland and chair of the housing committee, said that tenants also face unexpected circumstances and risk losing their holding deposits because of it.
“I’m wondering why a landlord should get special treatment aside from what a tenant gets when we have experiences outside of control of one party or another,” Marsh said. “It seems like the consequences should be equal.”
Ending application fees
Rep. Mark Gamba, D-Milwaukie, introduced House Bill 2967 to ban landlords from charging screening fees. It’s a problem that even affects lawmakers, Gamba said. Many rent apartments in Salem during the legislative session, and he talked to colleagues who shelled out money for application fees and are still waiting to get that money back.
Current law requires landlords to refund those fees within 60 days if they don’t run a background check. But they don’t always follow the law, leaving tenants to chase down that money, and when tenants apply to multiple apartments to up the odds of getting into a place, they can end up spending hundreds on screening fees.
“If you put out 50 bucks, 60 bucks, 70 bucks, you’re not going to be able to take the time to take six different landlords to small claims court to get back your 50 or 60 bucks,” Gamba said. “But that does add up.”
Adriana Grant, a policy associate for the Eugene Tenant Alliance, is also a low-income renter. She moved last year and spent nearly $500 on application fees, and she hasn’t been able to get most of that money back.
“Unfortunately, my priorities lie in ensuring that I have food security and other securities, not ensuring that I am following the trail of applications that I have put in,” she said. “For families struggling financially, these fees create a barrier to stable housing and push them into substandard conditions, limiting their access to better neighborhoods.
Landlords objected to Gamba’s bill as well. Jason Miller, legislative director for the Oregon Rental Housing Association, said eliminating fees would make it harder for landlords to process applications and harder for tenants to find housing.
“When applications are free, many individuals that know they will not meet the application criteria will apply anyways,” he said. “This will create a backlog when processing applications, and some qualified applicants will find themselves unable to find housing within their time frame, possibly becoming homeless while housing providers are dealing with the influx of under qualified applicants.”
It was mostly landlords, lobbyists and full-time tenant advocates who spoke during the meeting, but dozens of Oregon renters shared their own stories in written testimony published on the Legislature’s website. One, Whitney Donielson, wrote that she and her spouse have to pay $40 to $50 apiece in application fees each time they move.
“If we apply for more than one housing unit, it costs, at minimum, $100 to find a new place to live, and often more, since, with the tight rental market, it’s often necessary to apply to multiple units in order to secure a place to live,” Donielson wrote. “This does not include the financial strain of what often amounts to a nonrefundable security deposit, cleaning deposit, and first and last month rent, as well as other moving costs.”
Another, Salem resident Blake Claiborne, was skeptical that getting rid of application fees would lead to people submitting applications on a lark. The process of applying and paying thousands in fees and deposits with the understanding that a landlord will find any excuse to keep that deposit money is a nightmare, Claiborne added.
“The idea that so many of these opposing testimonies seem to focus on is that people will otherwise go around putting in housing applications ‘frivolously’ like it’s some kind of cool new TikTok prank, and I am genuinely confused whether any of them even truly believe that, and if so what they think other people do all day,” Claiborne wrote.
Tenant advocates object to fee instead of security deposit
Sen. Mark Meek, D-Gladstone, described his Senate Bill 158, which received a hearing Wednesday, as a way to help renters get their foot in the door. It would allow landlords to charge a monthly fee instead of a security deposit.
“A major reason why Oregonians struggle to find housing is that they simply cannot afford these high upfront costs,” Meek said. “Even for working families coming up with the first and last month’s rent, plus a security deposit, can be an overwhelming financial burden.”
But the bill doesn’t have a cap on the total fees charged. A tenant who pays a $25 monthly fee instead of a $1,000 security deposit would have spent less money after a year, but if that tenant stayed in an apartment for more than three years they would have spent more than someone who paid an upfront security deposit.
And unlike a security deposit, which a landlord can only keep if a tenant fails to pay rent or damages a unit, the bill has no requirement that a landlord return the fee. There’s also no guarantee that the fees tenants would pay would be used to address damages, as deposits do.
That’s why tenant advocates strongly opposed Meek’s bill. Timothy Morris, executive director of the Springfield Eugene Tenant Association, said a fee instead of a high deposit might sound great on the surface, but in practice it will hurt tenants and especially low-income tenants.
“But once you start looking into the details of the bill, its insidious nature becomes clear,” Morris said. “It’s ambiguous at best and lacks significant consumer protections.”
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