The Oregon Legislature is currently in its 2025 session, and Street Roots is publishing regular updates throughout its duration. Among the legislation being considered are bills impacting tenant rights and evictions, regulations and resources targeting homeless residents, food assistance and more.
For more of this ongoing coverage, visit streetroots.org.
ON THE AGENDA:
- House Bill 3644: Gov. Tina Kotek seeks money for statewide shelter network
- House Bill 2305: Republican bill seeks to make evictions easier
- House Bill 3521: Bill makes landlords pay for broken promises
- House Bill 2967: Bill would ban fees for tenant background checks
- Farrah Chaichi finds her place by being out of place
Gov. Tina Kotek seeks money for statewide shelter network
Portland Mayor Keith Wilson remembers watching two security guards carry a man (known only as Doug) out the doors of a hospital to a nearby park.
Doug, completely naked, immediately dropped to the ground.
“I stopped to care for him,” the mayor told House Committee on Housing and Homelessness members at the Oregon Legislature Feb. 24.
“Our city had no care for him in his greatest hour of need,” Wilson said. “The only thing we had from security guards is to carry this man over to the park. I found him shelter. I picked him up and put him into a taxi. This is not something that is normal in an urban environment. Suffering people don’t get better living on the street.”
Wilson joined Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek and others in advocating for House Bill 3644, which would create a statewide shelter program. Regional coordinators under the Oregon Housing and Community Services Department would oversee funding for local shelter providers and ensure coordination of services.
Kotek told committee members the bill “systemizes what has been happening — taking a regional approach, taking an approach that says we must get people housed in different types of ways, determined by the communities through their consideration of what works best.”
Nolan Crombie found shelter in Clackamas County. First, however, the teenager made the mistake of sleeping in his high school’s parking lot.
“I learned quickly not to do that,” Crombie said in a video presented to the committee. “Kids would show up early in the morning, come and mess with me, banging on the window, taking pictures of me.
“We’re brought up in a society where it’s normalized to kind of look down upon people underneath us, and I don’t believe that’s right at all. Instead of looking down on them, I think we should be helping lift them up.”
Crombie said he found dignity in a Clackamas County shelter program. The program is called AntFarm Youth Services. Despite the name, he said, he is not looked down upon.
“It’s not so much that AntFarm changed my life. It was they gave me the opportunity to change,” he said.
Such individual stories are important as lawmakers bandy about the $219 million price tag attached to House Bill 3644, Wilson said. Homeless residents are too often looked at as an issue rather than as people, he added.
“They’re not a monolith,” Wilson said. “If there are 5,000 people living on the streets of Portland, there are 5,000 reasons.”
Prior to the pandemic, Kotek told lawmakers that thousands of Oregonians were already living on the street.
“The pandemic exacerbated that,” she said. “It also provided a lot of opportunity with a lot of one-time dollars that we didn’t previously have.”
The money allowed cities and local nonprofits to provide new shelter beds.
When she came to office two years ago, “it was another opportunity to build on the work that had been done in the communities to build a system of shelter services across the state where there would be an ongoing commitment from the state,” Kotek said.
The governor’s housing and homelessness initiative director, Matthew Tschabold, told the committee that 4,800 state-supported shelter beds have been added over the past two years. In addition, Tschabold said 3,300 unsheltered Oregonians have been rehoused, and 24,000 households have been prevented from experiencing homelessness.
“We’ve created a system that needs to be sustained and maintained, and the state has to have a role,” Kotek said. However, it’s spendy. The $219 million attached to the bill is part of $700 million in the governor’s proposed budget to address homelessness.
“That seems like a lot of money, but that is the base foundation we need to do,” she told the committee. “When someone does experience homelessness, they will know where to go. They will know how to be served. We will be able to track that. We will also help them be rehoused.”
A lot of people remain unconvinced. Of the 63 people who submitted written testimony on the bill, only 17 supported it. Most balked at the cost. David Becker of Beaverton insisted he is not heartless, but legislators should “stop providing all the free products and services.”
“Homelessness in Oregon has become an industry, absorbing taxpayer dollars and solving nothing,” Becker added. “The more money you throw at this issue, the worse it becomes.”
Diane Johnson works in downtown Portland and wrote that she is “disgusted” at the lack of facilities for people suffering from mental illness and addiction.
“We need an audit done by an outside firm to see where all our taxes are going,” she wrote. “We don’t need more committees having more meetings with absolutely no results. All of our leaders have promoted is toxic compassion that helps no one.”
Oksana Bell of Sandy accused service providers of focusing on “easier cases” where people need minimal help to get off the streets.
“While this might make the numbers look good, it leaves behind those who need the most intensive and long-term support,” Bell wrote.
Wilson said sheltering efforts undeniably fall short in one regard.
“I’m going to continue hammering the importance of our missing link — which is scaleable, cost-effective, emergency nighttime shelter beds guided by an emergency response strategy,” he told lawmakers.
He pointed out that Boise and Boston (both roughly the same size as Portland) have less than 200 people living on the street and higher housing costs. Philadelphia is twice the size, with only 800 people on the street, according to Wilson.
The difference is that other cities have flexible nighttime emergency shelter options, Wilson said. They provide a pressure valve to allow other parts of the system to function, and they also function as day centers.
“Portland has the highest unsheltered homeless rate in our history, and the unsheltered are dying in unprecedented numbers,” Wilson said. “The recent Domicile Unknown report shocks the conscience.”
The Domicile Unknown report tracks (among other things) the deaths of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness. According to the report, there was a 477% increase in deaths between 2017 and 2023. There were at least 456 deaths last year, compared with the recorded 47 in 2011.
“We cannot look at this chart and think in terms of three-year plans, five-year plans and 10-year plans,” Wilson said. “We must think in terms of the most good we can do right now.”
Tschabold said if Kotek’s recommended budget is approved, more than one in three people experiencing unsheltered homelessness will be rehoused by the end of the 2025-2026 fiscal year. That’s not being optimistic, he told committee members.
“We are on track to exceed all of those outcomes by the end of the biennium,” he said.
House Bill 3644 comes directly from the governor’s office and is one of the cornerstones of Kotek’s response to homelessness this session. Tschabold told committee members that the bill will provide predictable funding that is transparent, equitable, data-driven and efficient and it will ensure that local shelter programs meet state standards while receiving prompt payments.
“The state is a partner,” Kotek told lawmakers. “We’re not telling folks what to do. We’re guiding and saying we need some consistency across the state. We have to have measurable outcomes. We need to know how the dollars are producing the outcomes we need, and we need to walk side by side to do this work.”
Mid-Willamette Valley Community Action Agency executive director Jimmy Jones told committee members that increased funding for shelter beds has profoundly impacted the Salem area.
“In 2018, we had zero shelter beds as an agency,” Jones testified. “Today, I’m sitting here with 302.”
Before the pandemic, churches and other charitable organizations offered most shelter beds, he said. In 2018, the Legislature kicked in $18.4 million for the biennium to address homelessness.
“We really were not yet taking the problem seriously across the state,” Jones said.
A lot of the pre-pandemic shelters placed high barriers before accepting people. As a result, he said, many people were excluded — especially families.
Delaney Clarkson lives in Opportunity Village in Eugene. She told lawmakers via video that she is a direct beneficiary of increased and coordinated shelter efforts.
Eugene’s population of 178,000 averages more than 3,500 people living in unsheltered homelessness. City officials invested one-time local, state and federal funds to create a network of shelters with social service providers. Clarkson told lawmakers that Opportunity Village saved her from the streets.
“It’s given me a roof over my head and a place for me to exhale and regroup,” she said. “I don’t have to worry where I’m going to lay my head at night or if I have enough food for my dog or myself.”
House Bill 3644 requires the Housing and Community Services Department to establish a statewide shelter program where regional coordinators are selected to administer funding to shelter providers. The Democrat-led bill from Gov. Tina Kotek’s office is in the House Committee on Housing and Homelessness. Public hearings were held Feb. 24 and 26. No committee meetings or floor sessions are scheduled as of March 3.
Republican bill seeks to make evictions easier
Oregon State Rep. Kevin Mannix, R-Salem, wrote a bill to make it easier for landlords to evict people.
“This bill is what I call the Good Neighbor Act,” he told his fellow members of the House Committee on Housing and Homelessness Feb. 17.
Oregon City neighbor Melissa Long wasn’t feeling the warmth.
She told committee members that Mannix’s House Bill 2305 “opens the door to discrimination, retaliation and abuse of power.”
The bill allows tenants to be evicted after the third late rent payment or third violation of the landlord’s rules. “We have already seen cases where tenants are targeted for speaking up against unsafe conditions, requesting repairs or organizing with their neighbors,” Long said.
Mannix told the committee he just wants to help landlords get rid of “jerks.”
“It’s designed to empower landlords to be able to deal with really bad tenants,” he said. “It’s designed to have tenants enjoy their property, knowing that the jerks next door who have been having late-night parties every night, trashing the premises, dealing drugs, etc., will be removed from the premises at some point.”
Committee members held public hearings on several landlord-tenant bills Feb. 17. Discussion of Mannix’s bill spilled over to the committee’s next meeting two days later.
Oregon legislators placed a moratorium on evictions in April 2020, shortly after the pandemic struck. It was extended several times before expiring in June 2021. State Rep. Court Boice, R-Coos Bay, co-sponsored House Bill 2305 and said there have been too many restrictions on landlords in recent years.
“We’re continually getting more and more regulations, more and more fees,” Boice told the committee. “We’re going too much the wrong way.”
Adriana Grant of Eugene testified that landlords are not nearly as vulnerable as renters. “Housing stability is a human right, and policies should protect tenants, not make things harder,” Grant told lawmakers.
“Many of us already struggle to pay basic expenses, and the fear of eviction only makes things worse,” she said. “Eviction can follow a person for an average of seven years, making it nearly impossible to find housing in a timely manner and trapping people in a cycle of instability.”
Students are particularly vulnerable, testified Portland State University Legal Services director and managing attorney April Aster.
“Prior to the pandemic, evictions were pretty uncommon for my office to see, and since the pandemic, they’re increasingly common — which is quite unfortunate and a sign of how bad the housing crisis is,” Aster said.
She expressed particular concern over the bill’s removal of tenants’ ability to avoid eviction by paying their back rent or correcting their behavior. “They’re now more likely to be evicted because they no longer have that option to cure for a third notice,” she said.
Aster recalled a student whose mother died right before the student’s final term in college. Her late mother was the co-signer on her lease.
“In addition to navigating grief and all that while trying to finish college, she was behind on rent,” Aster said. “Because of the right to cure, we were able to catch her up on rent, keep her housing and finish college.”
Oregon Law Center director of legislative advocacy Sybil Hebb rejected Mannix’s claim that the bill targets problematic tenants.
“This is not what this bill covers,” Hebb told the committee. “The bill addresses much more minor violations, and landlords already have myriad tools to address bad actors in many ways in the statutes. There are more than 24 specific provisions landlords have the opportunity to use without providing any opportunity to cure or correct behavior — often with very short notice.”
Hebb said people could be tossed out for leaving a towel on the balcony or parking incorrectly. “These minor lease violations often trip up people with disabilities, seniors, people with kids,” she said. “There are a lot of fair housing concerns that come up in that context.”
A lot of landlords love the bill. The committee received 262 pieces of written testimony. Of those, 180 were in support of the bill, and 82 were in opposition.
“Tenants need to be held accountable for their actions,” wrote Daniela Fora of Happy Valley. “Tenants have gotten used to either not paying the rent since there were so many protections during COVID-19 or being late with rent.”
However, not all landlords are on board.
“I’m a landlord, but I believe we already have more than enough rights, while tenants are frequently taken advantage of by bad actors,” wrote Elizabeth Kinevey-Gump of Corvallis. “I think this could be abused too easily, if passed. Yes, I am a landlord who supports tenants’ rights because I am a part of my community, and I want to be a value add, not someone who detracts from it.”
Fair Housing Council of Oregon legal counsel Steven Crawford told the committee the bill provides a way to discriminate against people with disabilities and diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds.
“The most common form of discrimination nationally and statewide is discrimination against disabled people,” Crawford said.
“Individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, specifically, can have a hard time understanding the rules and policies they are subject to by their landlords and will often times receive numerous eviction and violation notices over the course of their tenancy,” he added. “Many of them are willing to change their conduct, but this bill would take away their ability to change their conduct and continue to live a stable and happy life.”
Mannix said tenant rights are important, but so are the rights of landlords. “We forget there’s a balancing here, and this is designed to empower landlords with the bad tenants,” he said.
Long said the bill doesn’t give landlords rights as much as carte blanche.
“This bill gives bad actors free rein to push out tenants they feel are inconvenient,” she said. “Imagine a single mother who speaks up about mold in her unit. What stops a landlord from fabricating three vague lease violations to justify her eviction? Or a disabled tenant who requires a reasonable accommodation? What protects them from being accused of arbitrary lease violations?”
Erin Meechan of Gresham told lawmakers the bill could increase homelessness.
“As a single mom in my time of crisis, I have been evicted for nonpayment of rent due to loss of transportation and increases in cost of living,” she testified. “This experience kept us displaced for more than eight months with an eviction on my record, making it even more difficult to secure and fund a new home.”
As a result, she said, she dropped out of college, and her daughter fell very behind in school.
“The emotional toll on our family was great,” she testified. “This was nine years ago, and in the present time, we have almost caught up to our educational and life goals.”
Nonetheless, she added, the ripple effect of eviction took years to repair.
“This is a time when we must come together to support solutions to the housing crisis, not backward steps,” Meechan said.
House Bill 2305 allows tenants to be evicted after the third late rent payment or third violation of the landlord’s rules. The bill is in the House Committee on Housing and Homelessness. Public hearings were held Feb. 17 and 19. No committee meetings or floor sessions are scheduled as of March 3.
Bill makes landlords pay for broken promises
Landlords are reasonable people, Oregon Rental Housing Association legislative director Jason Miller told Oregon lawmakers Feb. 17.
Say someone puts down a deposit on an apartment, and the unit turns out to have mold infestations or a missing sink. Landlords will refund the entire deposit without being coerced by a state statute, Miller said.
Usually anyway.
“Let people be reasonable instead of putting this into law,” he told House Committee on Housing and Homelessness members.
Many of her constituents might disagree, said state Rep. Annessa Hartman, D-Gladstone. They’ve run into some less than reasonable landlords, she said — paying thousands of dollars in unreturned deposits, even when the rental unit is uninhabitable.
“Some arrived at the property to find unsafe conditions — broken plumbing, mold infestations,” Hartman told committee members. “Yet they were told they would forfeit their deposit unless they signed the lease. Others found the unit they thought they were securing was rented to someone else, leaving them scrambling for housing while their deposit remained in the landlord’s hands.”
House Bill 3521, the bill Hartman sponsored, requires residential landlords to pay a minimum amount of damages for breaching an agreement while holding a deposit.
Rental applicants will suffer if the bill passes, Oregon Association of Realtors past president John Baker said. Landlords may quit being so nice and reasonable, he told committee members at the Feb. 17 public hearing.
“The possible response to this bill, if enacted, is to no longer provide the favor to the tenant to hold the property until they’re ready physically and financially,” Baker said.
State Rep. Kevin Mannix, R-Salem, said rental applicants could be gaming the system. “What if someone does three hold deposits because they feel like it because they want to maintain their opportunities, and then later on they cancel?” he said.
Cameron Harrington, Oregon Housing Alliance director of policy and advocacy, said most renters don’t have the money for multiple deposits.
Landlords have a tremendous advantage by not being required to return deposits, Hartman said. “This is a systemic issue that preys on people who are already struggling to find stable housing,” she said.
The bill requires full written agreements before the landlord gets a dime in deposits. If a landlord fails to live up to the terms of the agreement, the entire deposit must be refunded. The landlord must also pay a penalty equal to the deposit amount.
Hartman said the bill removes deposits as a tool of coercion.
“Tenants should not have to choose between signing a lease for an unsafe home or losing a significant amount of money,” she said.
Miller, a landlord himself, said property owners often run into problems through no fault of their own.
There are delays in obtaining construction materials and permits as well as staffing shortages. Construction of the apartment complex he owns was delayed six months because the required electrical meters were out of stock.
“Are you suggesting that developers pay the additional penalty as well because the power company only allowed specific meters?” he said.
Committee Chair Pam Marsh, D-Ashland, said everyone has problems.
“Sometimes landlords, housing developers, have experiences that are outside of their control,” she said. “Sometimes that happens for tenants as well … In those cases, the tenant loses the whole deposit, even though conditions were outside of their control. I’m wondering why a landlord should get special treatment.”
House Bill 3521 requires residential landlords to pay a minimum amount of damages for breaching an agreement while holding a deposit. The bill is in the House Committee on Housing and Homelessness. A public hearing was held Feb. 17. No committee meetings or floor sessions are scheduled as of March 3.
Bill would ban fees for tenant background checks
Oregon’s landlords run background checks on potential tenants to keep out the riffraff — including, it seems, state legislators.
Many lawmakers rent apartments in Salem during the five-month session. State Rep. Mark Gamba, D-Milwaukie, pointed out that they are among the tenants who don’t get their money refunded after background checks clear.
“It’s a real-world example right here with our fellows,” he told members of the House Committee on Housing and Homelessness Feb. 17. Gamba was testifying on House Bill 2967, legislation he co-sponsored to prohibit landlords from charging housing applicants for background checks.
Legally, applicants are supposed to get the fee refunded following a successful background check. They can also receive a copy of the background check to find out why they’ve been rejected.
“What happens far too often is that neither of those things happen,” Gamba said. “People don’t get their deposits back, and they don’t receive a copy of the background check. The assumption is a background check was not done because there were 30 people applying for that same apartment. Someone got the apartment, and the landlord didn’t do a background check on the other 29 people.”
The only recourse tenants have is to take landlords to small claims court.
A 2023 bill (House Bill 3237) to allow local governments to cap applicant screening fees died in the House Committee on Housing and Homelessness. Another bill that year (House Bill 2680) requires landlords to refund screening charges within 90 days. The bill went into effect Jan. 1, 2024.
State Rep. Vikki Breese Iverson, R-Prineville, doesn’t know why another bill is needed.
“I always worry we layer legislation on top of each other before we give space for something we put into place to pan out,” she said.
It’s impossible to know if the 2023 bill is working, Gamba said.
“No one does studies,” he said. “There is no data to go to to find out. All we have is reports from people trying to rent apartments about their experience. Given that we’ve had some of our own fellow legislators recently experience the very same thing as they were trying to find places for this session, I would say it’s not worth it.”
He added that landlords “are not doing background checks on all 40 people who apply for one apartment. They’re doing background checks on enough of them until they find someone they’re willing to rent to. That’s usually two or three or four.”
Springfield-Eugene Tenant Association executive director Timothy Morris agrees with Gamba.
“Application fees are an unclear, unmonitored part of the rental application process,” Morris said. “Even after the passage of House Bill 2680, which clarified that process, we still hear no improvement of return of fees or any other return of information to the tenants.”
His association is part of an alliance with more than 60 other organizations dealing with housing issues.
“With all of these working professionals who have been in this industry for 20-plus years, they are often surprised that application fees can be returned because of how infrequently it is actually happening,” Morris said. “Black and Latino families typically submit 50% more applications than their white counterparts. Oregon’s residential application system is quite simply a slow-moving red-lining process for the rental system.”
The cost of background checks varies, but Housing Oregon policy and advocacy director Kevin Cronin said the cost is often high — at least for tenants.
“The truth is landlords have little incentive to keep them low,” Cronin said. “Higher application fees discourage lower-income people from applying.”
Multifamily NW director of public affairs Zach Lindahl said it’s unfair to expect landlords to pay for background checks. “Eliminating screening fees shifts the financial burden entirely onto housing providers, increasing operational expenses,” he said.
Vermont and Massachusetts have already banned the fees, Gamba said. “It’s just a cost of doing business.”
House Bill 2967 prohibits landlords from charging applicants for background checks. The Democrat-led bill is in the House Committee on Housing and Homelessness. A public hearing was held Feb. 17. No committee meetings or floor sessions are scheduled as of March 3.
Farrah Chaichi finds her place by being out of place
Farrah Chaichi may not wear one of her 11 Iron Maiden T-shirts for debates on the Oregon House of Representatives floor, but they were seen frequently on the campaign trail last year in her home district.
Most everyone at the Capitol knows Beaverton’s Democratic representative is a rocker at heart, with a definite thing for a certain English heavy metal band. As she sits in her third-story office in the West Wing and takes a drink from her Iron Maiden water bottle with a “Hunter S. Thompson for Sheriff” poster on the wall, she hardly comes across as an establishment politician.
“Hey! I am not establishment!” she told Street Roots.
There is evidence to back her up. Oregon’s heavy-metal, gonzo lawmaker is one of the most progressive members of the legislative assembly. She is also one of only two members who openly identify as socialists. The other is state Rep. Travis Nelson, D-Portland.
Both belong to the Democratic Socialists of America. The beginnings of a squad? Could be.
“He put us on his Twitter as the DSA Caucus,” Chaichi said.
Socialism is a notorious boogeyman in American politics, but embracing it hasn’t proven a liability among her constituents, she said. It may even help.
“It gives her a little bit of a distinction from traditional Democrats,” her policy director Zack Surmacz told Street Roots. “I could see that when we went door to door. We could talk about socialist policies, and people would say, ‘Oh, she’s different from those other people.’”
Beaverton and Aloha lean further to the left than people might think, Chaichi said.
“A lot of times, we would bring up socialist ideas, and people would be down with them,” she said. “It was like, ‘Oh, crap, there are a lot of socialists out here!’”
Chaichi added she hasn’t faced much backlash for being a socialist, but it wouldn’t matter if she did.
“I have the least amount to lose,” she said. “I’m not here because I want to climb a ladder.”
Being a socialist also helps keep away the lobbyists and other undesirables, she added.
“I feel sometimes that I get the benefit of being so mean that no one bothers me,” Chaichi said. “I don’t get lobbied to do things like other legislators. No one came to get me to vote yes on 4002. I didn’t have any meetings on that. They knew where I stood.”
She’s referring to House Bill 4002 from the Legislature’s 2024 short session (Chaichi voted no). The bill expanded funding for substance abuse treatment but made possessing hard drugs — even in small amounts — a misdemeanor. It rolled back Ballot Measure 110, which Oregon voters passed in 2020 to decriminalize possession of small amounts of drugs such as cocaine, fentanyl and methamphetamine.
“Obviously, I’m criminal justice reform-minded,” Chaichi said. “I definitely care about adults in custody, protecting them and their rights.”
She also champions the rights of unsheltered homeless Oregonians. She led the charge for a Right to Rest Act in 2023, one of the more quixotic crusades at the Capitol.
Right to Rest was one of the cornerstones of her first campaign in 2022. Her House Bill 3501 would have allowed homeless residents to remain without being rousted on public property. The bill languished in the House Committee on Housing and Homelessness until May 2023, when a nine-minute public hearing was held — too little and too late for the committee to send the bill for a vote on the House floor.
This was the third bill seeking a Right to Rest Act, and it died in committee for the third time.
The closest legislators have come to a Right to Rest Act was House Bill 3115 during the 2021 session. The bill established “objective reasonableness” as a statewide standard for city and county laws regulating the use of public property by homeless residents.
Many legislators want to scuttle the bill this session in the wake of Grants Pass v. Johnson, a June U.S. Supreme Court decision in which justices ruled 6-3 that cities could impose civil and criminal penalties for camping on public land.
Chaichi has not revisited Right to Rest. She has gone on to sponsor other pieces of progressive legislation. Her bills during this session include House Bill 3785, which restores voting rights to prisoners, and House Bill 3767, which repeals bans on local rent control.
She co-chairs the House Committee on Commerce and Consumer Protection and serves on the House Judiciary Committee and the Joint Committee on Ways and Means Subcommittee on General Government.
Her road to the Capitol began back home in Beaverton.
After graduating from Beaverton High School, the self-described “civics nerd” earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and political science from Seattle University and a master’s degree in paralegal studies from George Washington University. She served as a Beaverton Human Rights Advisory Commission member from 2014 to 2019.
She didn’t start her political career as an avowed socialist.
“It’s been more of an evolution,” she told Street Roots. “I wouldn’t say when I joined the Washington County Democrats, I called myself a socialist. I had socialist leanings and supported socialist policies, but I didn’t want to be a poser. I didn’t know what it meant to be a socialist, so I wasn’t going to claim that name.”
Even after joining the Democratic Socialists of America, she didn’t call herself a socialist.
“As I went on, I just became more and more comfortable,” she said. “When I ran for office in 2022, I was still growing into that comfort.”
Chaichi said many of her Washington County constituents count on her not being afraid to speak her mind and stand by her non-mainstream principles.
“I ran because I wanted to, but also a lot of people were really excited and counting on me to be here and say the things I normally say and do what I normally do,” she said. “I don’t want to let anyone down.”
President Donald Trump’s return to the White House sparks a wide range of emotions for a progressive politician, Chaichi told Street Roots, but she tries to focus more on Salem than Washington, D.C.
“We’re not the feds, at least,” she said. “We have at least control over what happens in the state of Oregon. God only knows what happens at the federal level. It’s whiplash. This happens. Then they take it back. Then this happens, and they take it back. All that uncertainty? Fine. We’ll just work on what we can work on here.”
These are undeniably frustrating times for progressives, she added.
“We tried with Bernie,” she said. “There was a whole effort to get more young and more progressive people involved. However, the systems that were set up were so entrenched that it was really hard to overcome. The people burned out. There are also still organizers and Bernie-crats who I came in with who are losing it too.”
Chaichi said she will continue to fight, doing her best to fill her niche at the Capitol as Oregon’s anti-establishment establishment figure. Still, she said, it’s not going to be easy.
“The next several years are going to be like … ‘Fuuuuck!’”
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This article appears in March 12, 2025.