Rent assistance delays leave thousands of Oregon renters on brink of eviction

In medium closeup, a woman stands in a doorway with her hands on her hips.  She's wearing a blue shirt and has purple streaks in her long hair

Callie Edwards at her home in Tualatin on Thursday. Edwards has applied for rental assistance from the state, but has not yet received it.The Oregonian

The last few months have been nerve-wracking for Callie Edwards.

At the beginning of the pandemic, the mother of four was laid off from her retail job. She struggled to find housing for a few months, eventually moving into a Tualatin townhome with her four children and driving for Uber to help pay her bills. But she has still not been able to keep up with rent and fell behind on payments over the last three months.

She applied for rent assistance from the state this summer, but her application went unreviewed for months. In recent weeks, she said, her landlord has left written notices threatening to evict her because the rent assistance hasn’t come through.

Last week, she got an email notice that the state had finally processed her rent assistance application. But the same week, her landlord warned she would be evicted if her overdue rent wasn’t paid by the end of the week.

As of Thursday, the money pledged by the state hadn’t yet come in.

“I’m on pins and needles,” Edwards said. “I don’t want to scare my kids, but I know they can feel it.”

Edwards is among thousands of Oregon renters who are in imminent danger of being evicted because the state has taken too long to process their rent assistance applications.

Lawmakers approved a stopgap measure this spring that was supposed to keep renters in their homes after the state’s moratorium on evictions expired at the end of June. The measure protected tenants from eviction for 60 days after they applied for rent assistance and notified their landlords. Multnomah County extended the window to 90 days, as did Washington County for unincorporated communities.

Renters also have until February to pay back rent accumulated between April 2020 and June 2021. But they can face eviction now if they’ve missed payments since July.

But nearly 11,900 renters statewide who applied for assistance through the state’s $204 million Oregon Emergency Rental Assistance Program have had their eviction protections time out as they continue to wait for their applications to be processed, according to data provided by Oregon Housing and Community Services, the state agency overseeing the rental assistance program. That includes more than 4,000 renters in Multnomah County who have been waiting more than 90 days for their applications to be processed.

And even though the state has made strides in speeding up the processing of applications in recent weeks after struggling with software issues for months, the housing agency still anticipates it will take up to three months to process all the applications that are already past the 60- and 90-day windows, which could allow for a surge of renters who sought help from the state to face eviction this fall.

“We are prioritizing applications that have exceeded the 60-day/90-day window,” said Connor McDonnell, a spokesperson for the state agency.

Eviction filings have already increased significantly since Oregon’s moratorium on evictions expired. There were 1,297 eviction filings for nonpayment across the state between July and September and 102 through the first 10 days of October, according to data compiled by the Oregon Law Center. Those numbers don’t include renters who vacate their homes before their landlords take them to court.

Sen. Kayse Jama, D-Portland, and Rep. Julie Fahey, D-Eugene, the chairs of the Senate and House committees on housing, sent a letter to Gov. Kate Brown last week urging her to speed up the processing of rental assistance applications and extend eviction protections for those waiting on rental assistance.

“We are writing with deep concern about the current state of rental assistance distribution in our state,” they wrote, “and we are urging further executive action to protect vulnerable Oregonians from becoming unhoused.”

However, Charles Boyle, a spokesman for the governor, said Brown does not have the authority under the Oregon Constitution to amend laws passed by the Legislature and that any changes would have to be approved by lawmakers.

But the Legislature isn’t scheduled to be back in session until next year. Fahey said she is advocating for counties to adopt their own eviction protections and will push for the Legislature to come into a special session if the governor won’t act.

“Obviously, the negative impacts of an eviction are significant,” Fahey said. “It’s not just a family becoming unhoused, it has negative impacts on physical health, mental health, children’s education, a tenant’s ability to keep a job, all of those long-term factors. It’s in the state’s best interest to take action to prevent evictions while we have these resources available.”

After this story was published, House Speaker Tina Kotek, D-Portland, echoed the call for a special session.

“Nothing is more important than keeping people housed,” Kotek said in a tweet. “The pandemic and the coming winter demand action now. We need a special session for legislators to fix this problem.”

Tualatin renter Crystal Rambo applied for assistance through the state on July 6. When her application hadn’t been processed by Sept. 23, her landlord taped a notice on her door telling her she had 30 days to make up the missed rent or face eviction from the apartment where she has lived with her 9-year-old son and 58-year-old mother for the last six years.

Rambo, 33, worked as a barber before the pandemic, but the barbershop where she leased space stopped renting to her last year. She has struggled to rebuild her business or secure other full-time employment because she needs to work flexible hours to care for her son and her mother, who is disabled. She has a data entry job lined up that will allow her to work from home, but it doesn’t start until January.

After receiving the 30-day notice from her landlord, Rambo contacted Community Action, the social services agency processing rent assistance applications in Washington County. She learned her application had been processed but that the agency had the wrong email address for her landlord. Once it was corrected, the agency informed her it would still take 6 to 10 weeks to cut a check to her landlord.

Her property manager has indicated that it will continue eviction proceedings until it gets its check. Rambo is working with a lawyer and is hopeful she will avoid eviction because she has been approved for assistance.

But that hasn’t eased her anxiety, and she has been having trouble sleeping. She is upset that her landlord is moving forward with an eviction when money is on the way, but she is also troubled that the state would set up what she believes was always going to be an unrealistic eviction protection period.

“Watching everything that happened with unemployment and how slow it was to get everything functioning, there’s no way they didn’t know that 60 days was not going to be enough time to get rent assistance to everyone who needs it,” Rambo said. “They said they were going to do their best to keep renters in their homes and then set a completely unrealistic safe harbor period for thousands of people.”

Renter advocacy groups, the Oregon Law Center and county staff have been reaching out to renters facing eviction proceedings in court to inform them of their rights. They have also worked with the state to expedite rent assistance applications for renters who have received eviction notices after their protections have expired.

Pamela Manley received an eviction notice from her landlord on Sept. 20, exactly 60 days after she applied for rental assistance through the state.

Manley has lived with her 9-year-old son in an apartment in Beaverton for three years but has struggled to keep up with rent since being furloughed last year from her job transporting people with disabilities and mobility impairments. She was only recently called back to work.

A friend recommended that Manley contact the Oregon Law Center after she received the eviction notice last month. The nonprofit law firm worked with the state to finally get her rental application pushed through.

“I’m so grateful that they were able to expedite my funding,” Manley said. “If it wasn’t for them helping me, who knows how long it would have been before the check came. I might have had to go to eviction court.”

Other renters are falling through the cracks.

A review of court filings show eviction cases for nonpayment of rent are proceeding apace, with trials being set in cases where a renters’ rent assistance protection periods have timed out. In a recent court filing in Umatilla County, a landlord specifically referred to their renter’s 60-day protection period ending as the reason for eviction.

Renter advocates say that’s good reason for the state to reinstate the eviction moratorium or at minimum extend the safe harbor window indefinitely for tenants whose applications for aid are still under review.

“All nonpayment evictions for those who have applied for rent assistance should be paused until applications can be processed and checks can be cut,” said Becky Straus, a lawyer for the Oregon Law Center. “No tenant should be evicted for nonpayment at a time when we have sufficient rental assistance resources available to help.”

Deborah Imse, executive director of Multifamily NW, a rental industry group whose members include a mix of large and small landlords and property managers, pointed out that the state has already extended the eviction moratorium several times. She said the state should be focusing on solving the issues that have led to massive delays in rent assistance reaching landlords.

“Renters and housing providers have both done their part,” Imse said. “Now the state needs to uphold their end of the deal and start distributing these funds. To address immediate housing instability, the best and easiest thing to do right now is to cross reference court filings with rental assistance applications and immediately cut a check to Oregonians in need.”

Lauren Everett, a spokesperson for the Portland Tenants Union, which advocates for renters, said there were 419 nonpayment eviction filings in Multnomah County alone between July and September.

The tenants group said five companies in Multnomah County are responsible for 25% of those eviction filings. Legacy Property Management, which manages apartments in the Portland area, alone has filed to evict 38 households for nonpayment since the eviction moratorium expired at the end of June. Legacy did not respond to a request for comment from The Oregonian/OregonLive.

Eviction filings are still down by about 50% from before the pandemic in 2019, according to data compiled by Multifamily NW, with protections for renters who missed payments earlier in the pandemic still in place. Many eviction cases are being paused or dismissed after renters apply for assistance or their rent assistance checks come through.

Volunteers from Portland Tenants Union have been going door to door to advise people facing the threat of eviction. Multnomah County, too, has ramped up its outreach efforts to reach more tenants who may be in danger of eviction.

But Everett said avoidable eviction cases will continue to proceed under the current state law. She said the solution, in the eyes of renters’ advocates, is simple: The state needs to reinstate its eviction moratorium.

“Even if the court dates aren’t taking place, some people have to move and just give up,” Everett said. “The filings need to stop.”

Jamie Goldberg; jgoldberg@oregonian.com; @jamiebgoldberg

—Jayati Ramakrishnan; 503-221-4320; jramakrishnan@oregonian.com; @JRamakrishnanOR

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