Commissioner Chloe Eudaly grew up near Forest Grove, Oregon, moving to the Portland suburbs at age nine. Eudaly attended Tigard High School, but dropped out and moved to Portland in 1988. Eudaly opened her bookstore, Reading Frenzy, in 1994. Eudaly resides in the Woodlawn neighborhood, and has a son, Henry.
City Council Member
Threats to Colleagues
On September 18, 2019, Willamette Week reported that Commissioner Chloe Eudaly had sent an angry email to her colleagues on City Council for not backing her plan to rewrite city policy on how neighborhood associations function and their relationship with the City.
Housing
Relocation Ordinance
In her first 30 days in office, Commissioner Chloe Eudaly introduced and successfully passed Mandatory Renter Relocation Assistance—commonly known as the relocation ordinance—into law. The ordinance requires landlords to pay for their tenants moving fees when they serve their tenants a no-cause eviction, a notice of non-renewal of a fixed term lease, a qualified landlord reason for termination, a rent increase of 10% or more over a 12-month period, or make substantial changes to lease terms. The fees are based on the size of the residential unit. For a studio or single room occupancy, a tenant is entitled to $2,900; for a one-bedroom: $3,300; for a two-bedroom: $4,200; and for a three-bedroom or larger: $4,500. The ordinance was passed on a 4-1 vote, with Mayor Ted Wheeler and Commissioners Nick Fish and Dan Saltzman voting in favor with Eudaly, while Commissioner Amanda Fritz voted against it. Initially, the ordinance was passed as a temporary measure that was set to expire with Portland’s housing emergency declaration in October 2017. However, the ordinance became permanent by a unanimous vote on Portland City Council in 2018.
On June 19, 2019, Commissioner Chloe Eudaly introduced and successfully passed the Fair Access In Renting ordinance into law. FAIR, which Eudaly worked on for two years, changes the way rental applications are screened in Portland. FAIR requires landlords to take a holistic approach to examining rental applications, requiring rental applications to be addressed on a first-come-first-serve basis. FAIR prioritizes accessible units for people with disabilities, limits landlords from requiring tenant incomes to be 2 to 2.5 times higher than rent and includes limits on using credit and criminal histories as criteria for denying a person’s rental application. While voting in favor of FAIR, Commissioner Eudaly testified that “It is no secret that Portland has a long history of overtly racist housing laws. What we fail to acknowledge more readily is that many of our current laws continue to uphold discriminatory practices. While the language may be less explicit now, the effect is just as clear: We continue to see communities of color, and especially Black residents, pushed to the margins of our city and beyond at an alarming rate.” FAIR passed on a 3-1 vote, with Mayor Ted Wheeler and Commissioner Nick Fish voting in favor with Eudaly. Commissioner Amanda Fritz was the sole no vote, while Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty was absent for the vote.
As transportation commissioner, Eudaly spearheaded the Rose Lane Project. Announced in June 2019, the Rose Lane Project was designed in response to the Enhanced Transit Corridors Plan, which was adopted by City Council on June 20, 2018. The Rose Lane Project will dedicate bus-only lanes throughout the city and will adjust traffic lights to give buses a head start at intersections. In trial runs for the Rose Lane Project, the Portland Bureau of Transportation installed a bus and bike-only lane on Southwest Madison Street, a bus-only lane on Northwest Everett Street, and a bus-only lane on the Burnside Bridge. TriMet lines on these routes saw decreases in delays of up to 76%, with buses crossing the Burnside Bridge nearly two minutes faster. On February 13, 2020, the Rose Lane Project was unanimously approved by Portland City Council.
