Portland Rent Control: 

A Guide FOR Tenants, BY Tenants

Here are the basics you need to know.

Landlords…

  • Cannot charge a fee for you to apply for an apt.

  • Can only charge you 1 month’s rent as a security deposit. 

  • Must give 90 days before raising your rent.

  • Must give 90 days if they don’t want to renew your lease.

  • Can only raise your rent by .7% of inflation annually (once a year).

  • Cannot, ever, raise the rent more than 10%.

  • Can’t kick you out for joining a union.

  • Can’t kick you out for complaining about rent control or health/safety violations.

  • Can’t try to cut a deal with you to charge more rent than is allowed (like, say, “Hey. If you pay me more, I’ll let you sublease the apartment for whatever you can get!”)

  • Can’t discriminate against you because you have Sec. 8 or any other subsidy program. 

  • Can’t discriminate against you because you are LGBTQ+, a woman, a person of color, Jewish, or any other bullshit reason that has nothing to do with whether you will be a good tenant!

  • Must provide you with a doc outlining ALL the rights above, and more. Literally. In your hand. Once you get it, read it!

  • If anything above doesn’t happen the way it is supposed to, email us immediately at info@portlandtenantsunion.com. We’ll keep it confidential and help get your landlord back in line.

    (Just to be clear, this is not legal advice. For that, contact Pine Tree Legal Assistance or use the self-help information on their site.)

GENERAL TIPS FOR RENTING

  • Try to keep all communications with your landlord in writing.

  • Take pictures of everything in your unit the day you move in/move out (to protect your security deposit).

  • Get to know your neighbors and previous tenants, if possible, so that you can communicate about potential violations.

    • Tip for contacting previous tenants - tell your landlord that you have mail for the previous tenant and that you need their contact information to forward their mail.

  • Fully understand your lease before you sign. Do your best to ensure there is language included about the terms of renewal for your lease.

IS MY UNIT PROTECTED BY RENT CONTROL?

Most likely, yes. Only units that are are government regulated units (like dorms, or Section 8) or where the owner lives in the building. So double check with us if your landlord tries to say you aren’t protected by rent control.

IS MY UNIT REGISTERED?

Registration is required for all rental units in Portland. Finding out if your unit is registered with the City is the first step to making sure your landlord is in compliance.

Portland has a self-service portal to check on the registrations of your unit. Simply type in your address, or potentially the name of your landlord, and find the results. You may need to try some different spellings/abbreviations (such as “St” instead of “Street”). You’ll want to filter by “License” on the left and find something that might say “LTR”. A correct registration would look like this:

If there is no license, or if the dates are off, or if the license is revoked, etc., your landlord is not in compliance! There are hundreds of units registered with $0 rents, so even if they are registered you will want to double-check their information. You can click on the “License Number” to open another menu to see more details. If you click on “More Info”, you should be able to see what the base rent is for your unit (more on that later), the rent history, any banked rent your landlord may have, etc. If this information isn’t lining up with what you know to be true about your unit - your landlord is violating your rights as a renter and you might be owed money back in overcharged rent.


If you are having trouble navigating the site or things just aren’t adding up, feel free to contact us at info@portlandtenantsunion.org so that we can help you get to the bottom of it. We can assist you with contacting the Housing Safety Office and helping you find the info about your unit.

The next, most crucial part, is to understand how the ordinance looks at rent. This information will only apply for Covered Units under rent control, as we described earlier. Exempt Units can have any rent allowed by the State of Maine.

  • The Base Rent is the amount of rent charged for the unit in June 2020. If the unit was vacant on that date, was not a rental, or did not exist, the Base Rent is the amount of rent agreed to by the first tenant. It is important to know the Base Rent as this is the number that all other calculations start with.

    • Find this information however you can. The city should have this number, but if you are able to learn from previous tenants or previous owners, from Zillow or other rental listings (or, potentially, your landlord), it will be crucial to have proof of this number.

  • Allowable Rent Increases: Rent increases on a covered unit can never be above 10% in a given year. If you are in a covered unit and your rent was raised over 10%, even from the previous tenant to you or from a previous owner to a new owner, then your landlord owes you money that they overcharged. Rent increases within 10% can be composed of any combination of the below categories:

    • Allowable Increase Percentage: This is a number based on inflation that the City decides every year. It is posted on the Rent Control website. 

      • 2025 - 2.5%; 2024 - 2%; 2023 - 7%; 2022 - 4.3%

    • New Tenancy: Landlords can increase the rent by an additional 5% if the previous tenant leaves, but only if the previous tenant leaves voluntarily. The City is being very lenient on their definition of “voluntary”, but the purpose of this section of the law is to make it so that if your landlord initiates the decision not to continue your tenancy, they do NOT get the 5% increase. They get the 5% increase if the previous tenant leaves of their own free will with no coercion from the landlord.

    • Banked Rent: If a landlord is entitled to raise the rent, from AIP or New Tenancy, but they do NOT raise the rent or raise the rent less than they are entitled, then they are allowed to “bank” the extra amount to use in a future year.

      • Landlords bank rent through the annual registration process. If your landlord never registered, or did not submit the correct numbers to bank rent, then they are not in compliance and do NOT have banked rent to use.

    • Rent Board approved increases: If a landlord’s operating costs exceed their other allowed increases, they can submit an application to the Portland Rent Board to get it approved. These increases are still capped at 10% in a given year. 

  • Appropriate Notice of Rent Increase: There are strict requirements for how a landlord has to give you notice of a rent increase. Before increasing the rent of a Covered Unit, a landlord must give tenants notice of any rent increase at least 90 days in advance. The notice must be in writing and must include: the landlord’s signature, the date which tenancy began, the date the increase will take effect, the amount of the increase, any remaining banked rent not included in the increase, and the reasons for the increase in rent (from the categories listed above).

    • The city provides a helpful template for what a rent increase notice should look like.

    • As you will see in the ordinance, “Failure to provide such documentation shall be considered a violation of this Article, and any notice not containing all such documentation shall be void.” 


If your landlord increased your rent, and did not give you the appropriate notice information with the appropriate 90 day period, the rent increase is void and your landlord owes you money.

Base Rent, Allowable Increases, Notice of Increase, etc.

RENT:

Termination of Tenancy

A landlord must provide a tenant with a minimum of 90 days’ notice to terminate their tenancy, except for the following: 

  • A landlord can evict a tenant with 7 days’ notice “for cause”, such as if the tenant destroys property or violates certain terms of the agreement. 

  • A landlord may terminate a tenancy by notice of 60-89 days if they provide an amount equal to one months’ rent for the inconvenience of terminating their tenancy; or, 

  • A landlord may terminate a tenancy by notice of 30-59 days if they provide an amount equal to two months’ rent for the inconvenience of terminating their tenancy.

This even applies for month-to-month or tenancies-at-will (tenancies without a lease, such as a verbal agreement between you and your landlord). There is a gray area currently if your lease has a specified end date and no language about renewal or what happens at the end of your tenancy. If so, your landlord must still follow the above rules if they terminate your tenancy in the middle of your lease.

My landlord broke the law:

what do I do about it?

If you have reviewed the above and have strong evidence that your landlord violated the ordinance, they are not entitled to any rent increases while they were out of compliance. For example, if they didn’t register, lied on their registration, increased your rent above the legal limit, or increased the rent without giving you the proper notice - your landlord owes you money and has to reset the rent to the last time they were compliant.

Attempting to get money back from your landlord is a risky process. In an ideal scenario, you would only pursue getting your money back when you know you will be leaving your apartment. While a landlord cannot legally retaliate against you for complaining to them or the City, it is absolutely possible that they will not renew your lease since retaliation is notoriously hard to prove and they don’t generally need to give you an explanation to terminate your tenancy. There is benefit to joining or forming a Tenants Union to submit complaints if you know of other tenants with similar complaints to protect yourself from potential retaliation. Reach out to us at the Portland Tenants Union if you want to strengthen your case with other tenants across the city.

If you decide you want to pursue action against your current or a previous landlord, there are a few options, which we can help you navigate:

The City should respond to the complaint within a few days. They claim that every landlord that they have found to be in violation has willingly corrected their violations and paid back what they owe tenants, so your odds of getting money back if you have proof are good. However, you will want to triple-check the math of your refund with a lawyer or other tenants rights advocates (such as us) as the City has under-calculated refund amounts in the past.

If you have gone to the City and you still feel like they are not fully resolving your situation, you can submit a complaint to the Portland Rent Board via email and request to have a hearing against your landlord. The Rent Board has correctly calculated and adjusted refund amounts in the past. In one case, an incorrect initial refund calculation from the City of $2090 had been correctly adjusted by the Rend Board to the amount of $4200 in overcharged rent owed back to a tenant, so it is in your best interest to be absolutely sure of the correct rent amounts that should be charged.


If you have any questions about anything on this page, or would like to discuss your situation with us, please contact us at info@portlandtenantsunion.org

LEARN MORE ABOUT YOUR RIGHTS

The City of Portland has a website dedicated to Rent Control & Rental Housing Rights. On this site, you will find links to Rent Control FAQs, the actual Rent Control Ordinance, and the Rental Housing Rights document (that your landlord is required to give you when you rent). 

There are many state-level rights that apply to renters in Portland. Pine Tree Legal Assistance provides many great self-help resources to learn about your rights within the state. This page will primarily focus on the rights that are unique to renting in Portland.

This page will help to summarize your rights but there are extensive protections that this guide might not touch on.