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The Portland City Council on Wednesday evening approved a controversial ordinance that bans the use of algorithmic software to set rents. <\/p>\n
The legislation is intended to prevent large landlords and property management companies from using AI software to engage in \u201cprice-fixing\u201d, which can falsely inflate rents. Councilor Angelita Morillo championed the proposal starting in the spring and took it up again this fall after she put it on the back burner this summer.<\/p>\n
All six members of the city\u2019s progressive caucus voted for the ban, as did Councilors Elana Pirtle-Guiney and Loretta Smith. Councilors Dan Ryan and Olivia Clark voted against it, and Councilors Eric Zimmerman and Steve Novick were absent from the meeting.<\/p>\n
The legislation rankled business, industry and homebuilding groups, who opined that it would further hinder development of housing in a city that desperately needs more of it. Proponents of the ban said other cities had passed a similar ban and that the ban would in no way make building homes more expensive or make being a landlord more legally dicey.<\/p>\n
The Wednesday night meeting preceded a social media fight between Councilors Dan Ryan and Angelita Morillo that broke out on Tuesday online. In an Instagram post, Ryan wrote that the AI ban came straight out of the \u201cnationalist socialist playbook.\u201d (National socialism is Nazism.) Though Ryan soon after edited the post to reflect that he meant it came from the Democratic Socialists of America\u2019s national platform, the error didn\u2019t escape councilors backing the AI ban.<\/p>\n
Morillo, a Peacock (the name of the progressive caucs), took to her Instagram story to respond to Ryan\u2019s post.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s time we start talking about what\u2019s happening with the more conservative side of council, because it\u2019s getting a little weird and frankly out of hand,\u201d Morillo said to the camera. \u201cHe either intentionally or unintentionally called me a Nazi or fascist for trying to stop price fixing…It\u2019s hurtful and unprofessional to call your colleague, who is Latina, a Nazi, especially when she\u2019s been targeted by actual Nazis quite often.\u201d Councilor Candace Avalos, a Peacock, responded in the comments: \u201cI completely agree\u201d. <\/p>\n
The back-and-forth between councilors is the latest spat between a member of the council\u2019s progressive caucus, called Peacock, and the councilors to their right, who are far less organized.<\/p>\n
Councilor Mitch Green, another member of the council\u2019s progressive caucus, wrote on Bluesky on Tuesday evening: \u201cDisagreement on policy is welcome and reasonable, but calling me a Nazi for cosponsoring an ordinance to ban price-fixing is completely unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the Wednesday meeting, Ryan read a prepared statement about the snafu, in which he said the phrasing was accidental and not what he intended to communicate.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would not ever knowingly make statements of this nature,\u201d Ryan said. \u201cIf the backlash to my misinterpreted statement is an indication of future actions, I will have to continue to react to unfounded attacks from those who politically are not aligned with me,\u201d Ryan said. <\/p>\n
Morillo interrupted Ryan mid-statement. <\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t heard an apology about the Instagram post that inadvertently called numerous councilors of color a Nazi,\u201d Morillo said, as Council President Pirtle-Guiney told her to let Ryan finish. \u201cAll I heard was victim-blaming, assumptions that no one else can possibly understand an Instagram post, and not an apology.\u201d<\/p>\n
Councilor Candace Avalos took issue with Ryan\u2019s statement, too, saying that she found it \u201creally frustrating for colleagues to spend a lot of time posting about other colleagues – I do not recall any of us going out of our way constantly to call out other colleagues.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pirtle-Guiney interrupted Avalos, asking her to keep her comments to the policy itself. \u201cWhy are you interrupting me but you didn\u2019t interrupt him?\u201d Avalos replied sharply. \u201cIf Councilor Ryan gets to make a big speech, then here I am doing mine, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dunphy, a Peacock, took a jab in his final remarks before the vote at the councilors poised to vote against the ban. \u201cI\u2019m grateful that this fight has exposed bare who we are,\u201d Dunphy said. \u201cAs my colleague Councilor Smith has said repeatedly, when someone shows you who they are, believe them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Willamette Week is in the middle of our most important annual fundraiser. As a local independent news outlet,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303784,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-303783","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303783\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}