I care for a gal who is 78 yrs old. She lives in a senior assisted living. She pays a base rent, can they raise it after less than 6 months?

Look in her rental/tenancy agreement and see what it says. If neither she nor you can make head or tail of what it says, does she have a lawyer? If not, see if your Area Agency on Aging can suggest where she might find help and advice.

I am interested to read online that new rent control laws in Oregon came into force last year, capping increases to 7% and requiring landlords to give tenants 3 months' notice; but for one thing this may not apply to ALFs, which could be exempt for all sorts of reasons, and for another I don't see anything about a minimum fixed term of 12 months.

Has your client shown you the actual paperwork, or is she in a tizzy about a letter she's had that you haven't seen yourself?

Is she telling you this anecdotally, or have you actually seen a rent increase letter or the last month's rent and the latest month's rent? I'm saying this because sometimes seniors don't have the best memories or she is believing/imagining something that isn't true. My MIL used to tell us her purse was stolen (when she misplaced it). After we replaced her purse that first time and then she said it happened again we finally figured out not to react to everything as if it were gospel truth but had to verify before we took it in as truth. I hope they didn't raise her rent!

She had to sign some sort of rental agreement before she moved in, right? It’s usually a lot of legalese and jibber jabber that normal folks can’t figure out. But I can almost guarantee you that somewhere in the agreement is a paragraph that says the management can do whatever they want, like the lot rental agreement we have here does. If you really want to be certain she’s not being taken advantage of, have an attorney look over the agreement.