PORTLAND, Maine — A Portland tenant who won a settlement against his landlord is spending his Labor Day settling into his new apartment after moving over the weekend.
Although the city's rent board ruled in Bradley Davis' favor after he pursued a lawsuit against his landlord, Davis said he believes the time he spent fighting for his rights over the past several months is something taxpayers pay the city to do.
According to a city memorandum, the rent board found that Davis' landlord, Elizabeth Kane, violated 6-233(a), 6-234(b)(2), 6-234(c), 6-234(d), 6-237(e), and 6-238(b)-(d) of the City Code rent control ordinance.
Davis began his lease at 36 Sawyer St. on June 1, 2023. The memorandum states that the landlord charged Davis excess rent during his lease term. It also details that the landlord emailed Davis a rental renewal offer on March 2 with a new lease term and an increase to the rent.
At the time, Davis was interested in renewing his lease, but he questioned the legality of the rent increase, suspecting that the increase would be a violation of the city's rent control ordinance.
The memorandum documents that when Davis questioned the landlord about the terms included in the rental renewal offer on March 5, the landlord retaliated in April, retracting their offer to rent the apartment for a 12-month lease term, and instead, offered Davis an at-will term through June 30, 2024.
Davis filed a complaint against his landlord to the city and the rent board on April 17.
After the rent board found several rent control violations, Davis and his landlord reached a $19,600 settlement, which included a reimbursement for overpayment of rent as well as penalties.
The amount was reduced by $3,200 to cover the cost of two months of rent, and Davis was allowed to continue living in the apartment until Aug. 1, 2024.
From April to July, Davis said he sat through several hearings with the city of Portland's rent board and his landlord. Throughout the process, he said he did not receive any help from the city to reach the settlement.
Davis said the city does not properly review or verify information that landlords submit on rental registration forms. He explained that he has seen several rental registration forms that list a landlord's monthly rent requirement as $0.
Davis added that he blames the city for incidents where tenants are taken advantage of by landlords who violate the city ordinance, explaining that the city does not effectively review registration forms or monitor rent increases that landlords make.
"If they're accepting registrations that are omitting information or have incorrect numbers, then they can't even do the calculations if they wanted to," Davis said.
In an email response, the City of Portland's Director of Communications Jessica Grondin wrote, "We do not have the capacity to verify that every data point submitted for each registration is correct, it is not feasible. But since hiring dedicated staff in fy24, we have been performing regular audits on the data."
Davis said he read the ordinance piece-by-piece for months. His time spent helped him reach a settlement, but he said it shouldn't be his job to make sure landlords are compliant with laws on the books.
"As taxpayers, we are paying them to look into these issues and to enforce the laws that have been put on the books, and right now they're just not doing that," Davis said.
Regardless of his win, Davis said he believes those countless hours, days, and months he spent showed just how much the city dropped the ball.
"The city dropped the ball for everybody," Davis said. "I think my landlords were let down as well. I think that there just needs to be a lot more education, a lot more effort, a lot more enforcement around these issues so that situations like this don't happen ever again for anybody."
Davis was the first tenant to actually win a settlement from a landlord since rent control in Portland was enacted.
Grondin shared in an email that the city recently included funding in its FY24 budget specifically to improve the rent control monitoring process.
"When the ordinance passed by citizen referendum, there originally had been no additional resources allocated to its enforcement or administration in the Council budget," Grondin wrote. "In FY2024 though, the Council approved three new positions for the Division, a Coordinator, an Inspector, and a Licensing Assistant dedicated to Rental Registrations and Rent Control. There is now more personnel specializing in this area to assist landlords and tenants."