Portland lacks a formal process for renters to form a tenant union, but residents at one apartment complex say they’ve found leverage by banding together. by Abe Asher Tenants at The Russell, a 68-unit apartment building in Northeast Portland, had a problem: the elevator in their building was out, and Trion Living, the company that owns the building, wasn’t in a hurry to do anything about it.  “We just wouldn’t hear from them,” Nick Narsing, a software engineer who has lived in the building for two years, said. “We would reach out, and they would just refuse to give any updates or give a timeline of when they expected this elevator to be back in service.” The elevator was an issue that affected everyone in the building, particularly older residents who lived on upper floors. But it was far from the only issue. Residents said maintenance requests would frequently go unanswered. The carpets weren’t regularly cleaned. An HVAC went out. A communal printer disappeared. The television was stolen and never replaced.  Residents said that level of service wasn’t what they expected from a building that is marketed as featuring “Pearl District amenities” including a rooftop deck and “high-end” finishes and amenities.  Even as concerns with the maintenance of the building mounted, Trion continued to raise rents. Residents said their utility bills were going up as well.   “One of the reasons why I moved in was we had a live-in, onsite manager,” Chase Sterling, an organizational psychologist, said. “That manager moved out to a different property in a different state. Ever since that replacement, the service started to deteriorate.”  Meanwhile, Sam Hoppe, a tenant organizer with Renters Action Network and Portland Tenants United, was looking for a new building to organize. She found The Russell due to its negative Google reviews—a number of which had been left by dissatisfied residents attempting to get the management company’s attention. Starting in early June, Hoppe and her fellow organizers began knocking on doors in the building and found plenty of residents receptive to her message, but lacking the connections to take collective action.  “I’d be frustrated with living in the Russell and with these experiences, and I guess that sometimes it takes an outsider to make you realize that you can talk to your neighbors,” Thijs Kleinpaste, a non-profit worker and academic, said. Hoppe helped organize an initial meeting at the beginning of the summer for residents to get together, get to know one another, and share their concerns about the state of the building. They had plenty to discuss.  “As we started attending our union meetings, we learned that there were so many more grievances that we all shared—some bigger, some smaller—that really made us step back and say, okay, we need to put together a demand letter and let Trion know that there are a lot of issues affecting this building that we need to see resolved,” Narsing said. Following that initial meeting, organizers put together a letter to Trion spelling out their demands. Over eight pages, the letter detailed issues with communication and transparency, security, health, and more. The residents hand-delivered the letter to a Trion office and asked that Trion respond to the letter within 10 days. With the help of Renters Action Network and Portland Tenants United, residents at The Russell apartments formed a tenant union and sent a demand letter to their building's owners after basic maintenance requests were repeatedly ignored. courtney vaughn The response they ultimately got from Trion in early August was disappointing: The company ignored all the major asks residents made. They did, however, replace the building’s printer. “It did not feel to us like Trion was engaging in good faith—and I think it’s indicative of the relationship we have with this company,” Kleinpaste said. “They’re trying to get the maximum out of us with the least amount of effort, and it shows every step of the way.”  Trion Living did not respond to a request for comment on this story.  Residents at The Russell have attempted to use other means of getting the company to respond to meet their needs, including leaving negative reviews and filing code complaints. Organizers said several tenants are suing Trion.  By October, the tenants said they managed to schedule a meeting with Trion’s corporate leadership. Tenant unions are more common in select cities with a high percentage of renters. But organizing an apartment building in Portland and taking collective action against a landlord is not an easy task. Unlike in a handful of other cities like San Francisco, there is no process by which Portland renters can officially unionize and few renter protection laws exist.  Thus the Russell Apartment Tenant Union, the name under which residents like Kleinpaste and Sterling are organizing, is not an official union. It was not voted on by a majority of residents and has no rights that a labor union might have. It also has not been recognized by Trion.  Nevertheless, union organizers said, engagement from tenants is high: more than half the building’s residents have engaged with organizing work over the last several months, and more than two thirds signed the demand letter sent to Trion.  “If there were that [ratification] process, I am confident that the Russell Apartment Tenant Union would have cleared whatever threshold they would have needed,” Hoppe said. “But it really is kind of the Wild West in Portland for tenant organizing.” The upcoming City Council election is one place renters may be able to make an impact. A number of candidates in each Council district have signed onto a Renters Bill of Rights pledge, meaning the new council could, depending on election results, be one of the most renter-friendly in the city’s history.  In September, the Russell Apartments Tenant Union hosted a forum for candidates in District 2 to discuss tenant issues with residents and other renters in the building’s common room. The five candidates in the district who signed the pledge were invited and attended, and Narsing said he heard it was one of the district’s best-attended forums all fall.  The energy behind the forum pointed to a need for renter visibility and political power that groups like the Renters Action Network and Portland Tenants United are attempting to address. Hoppe said there’s an appetite for the kind of organizing she helped do at The Russell all over the city.  “We have been reached out to by a lot of people to come and help organize their buildings, more people than we have the capacity to organize,” Hoppe said.  In the meantime, the union plans to continue its work through its group chat and person-to-person organizing that began earlier this year. The union is not endorsing any candidates in the upcoming election, but wants residents to be informed about where candidates stand on tenant issues.  “I don’t think we necessarily agree with each other on every single issue,” Kleinpaste said. “But we definitely agree that we deserve much better from our building management company.”