Eviction filings in Oregon are at an all-time high. This January, nearly 3,000 Oregon families faced eviction in court, roughly one-third of whom are Multnomah County residents. That’s double the pre-pandemic average.
But even those high numbers don’t tell the full story. For every formal eviction filed in court, five households experience informal evictions, according to Oregon Law Center data. Informal evictions happen when landlords get tenants to move: via harassment like lockouts, refusal to address dangerous conditions, simply removing people’s belongings, or by threatening formal eviction — regardless of whether that threat is legally actionable.
Leeor Schweitzer, an organizer with Portland Tenants United, said people tend to focus on eviction filings, because they’re easy to track.
“Most people who lose their housing never get to that phase,” he said.
Many tenants choose to leave their home before the landlord can file for eviction in court. They fear navigating an intimidating and expensive legal system or ending up with an eviction on their record.
“Having a court determination is something that follows you around,” Schweitzer said. “If it never goes to court, then there’s no record of the fact that you got a lease termination.”
As pandemic-era federal funding for eviction prevention dries up, state lawmakers slash funding for eviction prevention, rent prices skyrocket and the job market becomes increasingly competitive, it has become more difficult than ever for low-income tenants to find — and keep — affordable housing.
And research shows a direct line between eviction and homelessness. Only one-quarter of people evicted were able to move in with family and friends, according to a report by the Seattle Women’s Commission and the King County Bar Association, while 37.5% ended up living on the streets and another 25% moved into shelter or transitional housing.
Meanwhile, rent continues to rise at an alarming rate. A 2020 study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that median rent increases of $100 per month were associated with a 9% increase in homelessness. As of December 2025, Oregon’s annual rent cap is 9.5%. In Portland, where the median rent is $1,849, that’s an increase of $175 per month.
Jimmy Jones has for years advocating for homeless residents via his work as vice president of Mid-Willamette Valley Community Action Partnership.
“It’s just a gigantic, freaking mess,” Jones said. “We’re going to see probably a record number of evictions in 2026 with these new increases, simply because people cannot afford to stay in their homes, and that will create a consequent increase in homelessness.”
‘We pay you to live here. We are not your staff.’
For Casey Busterna and their partner Clover, self-eviction felt like the only option to escape an increasingly hostile and financially-tenuous living situation.
In November 2023, Casey and Clover signed a lease to rent one room in a shared living space with two other roommates, one of whom was their landlord. They agreed to pay $1,200 per month. Once they moved in, their landlord imposed increasingly strict rules regarding cleaning procedures. At the same time, their landlord began billing tenants for more and more “household supplies,” they said, such as $440 in firewood or brand new kitchen utensils — even though tenants were not permitted to bring their own cookware into communal spaces.
“He kept using these words, ‘community,’” Clover said. “But then he kept following that with really vague threats of ‘you will do it my way, or else,’ but never defined what the ‘or else’ was.”
When they raised concern over time-consuming and inflexible communal living expectations, such as folding hand towels in a particular way, he accused the two of violating the lease.
“He kept trying to enforce it as a legal obligation, and we were like, ‘That is not a legal obligation,’” Clover said.
As tensions rose, the landlord refused to respond to maintenance requests and safety concerns, such as fixing a leaking shower, dealing with an unmarked trench or fixing the air conditioning.
In November, two days after the couple stopped complying with demands that were not legally required of them, the landlord asked them to meet in the dining room for a chat at 10 p.m. They declined, because it was a work night. Within an hour, the landlord bombarded them with 16 text messages.
He left a lease termination notice in an envelope on the dining room table.
Among the listed violations: not folding hand towels properly, not immediately washing their dishes and allowing guests to use the driveway.
“He just kept trying to wield that power over us by threatening legal action of different kinds, threatening to evict us,” Clover said. “One of the things that we had both complained to him about many times previously was, we pay you to live here. We are not your staff.”
Upon receiving the lease termination notice, Casey and Clover reached out to more than a dozen lawyers. Only a handful responded, and just one was available for a brief consultation, but did not have capacity to represent them in court. Still, it was helpful. The lawyer explained that the eviction was not legally enforceable and advised them to wait out the clock. In the meantime, they received a second lease termination notice with a new move-out date at the end of the year. And after that, the landlord sent a third.
For Clover, being in limbo for so long was taxing. For several months, they did not know if they would come home to their belongings having been removed from the house. At one point, they had a go bag for their cat, Finn, in case they suddenly needed to evacuate him.
Eventually, they were able to negotiate a Jan. 31 move out date. And they found temporary housing through their community network. Their current landlords are renting to them at a loss, to make sure they remain housed while they search for additional roommates.
“Thanks to our support network, we fared far better than most,” said Clover. “Without that support network, it’s then going to the streets and dealing with the sweeps and the cops and the violence out there. That’s really scary.”
Only about one in five tenants evicted in 2025 were able to secure new rental housing immediately after being displaced, according to a study by Evicted in Oregon. Nearly two out of three evicted tenants moved directly into some form of homelessness. That could mean living outside, or it could mean some form of what researchers call “hidden homelessness.”
Doubling up, a form of hidden homelessness, refers to when a person temporarily moves in with someone else because they do not have housing of their own. Unsheltered homelessness, however, refers to when a person lives outside or somewhere not meant for human habitation.
If they hadn’t found a discounted lease through mutual friends, Casey and Clover would have moved into doubled-up homelessness. They would have scattered their belongings among different friends’ spaces and temporarily stayed in a friend’s attic, until they could afford another rental. In some ways, their outcome represents a best-case scenario.
In a separate study, Evicted in Oregon found that 61% of tenants fled their homes after being threatened with eviction. More than half vacated without challenging the eviction.
‘It’s super easy to get evicted, even if you did nothing’
That was the case for Rambo “Bo” Richardson.
In 2015, Richardson moved to Oregon with $300 in his pocket. Since then, he’s stayed on friends’ couches, worked in exchange for free rent, camped in Forest Park and lived out of his car.
In 2024, he signed his name on a lease for the first time in his life. For $725, the 10 foot by 10 foot room in a West Linn house with several other tenants seemed like a good deal. But after moving in, he realized his room was not habitable. Urine stains from the previous tenant had damaged both the carpet and the wooden floors beneath.
Gutters dangled haphazardly from the roof and extra layers of shingles patched up leaks. Inside, the fridge sporadically turned on and off. Carbon monoxide alarms, fire alarms and stove vents did not work properly. The landlord had installed security cameras with audio inside the house. He raised these issues, citing Oregon tenant-landlord law. But the landlord continued to ignore safety hazards.
“I was quickly realizing I was the only one willing to verbalize these concerns to him,” Richardson said.
In August, after eight months of paying rent for a virtually uninhabitable space, he arrived home to a 30-day notice of termination. He appealed the no-cause eviction in the Clackamas County Justice Court, to no avail. Though no-cause evictions were largely outlawed in Oregon when Senate Bill 608 was passed in 2019, the law allows no-cause evictions within the first year of tenancy.
Richardson spent hundreds of dollars on court fees and hours sifting through paperwork, but in November the court ruled in favor of the landlord. He moved out a few days before the sheriff arrived to evict him.
Now, Richardson is back to living in his car with his husky, Arlo. In exchange for working on an old house, he’s able to keep his car on the property. He said it has been strange adjusting back to living in a car after being comfortable for eight months.
With an eviction on his record, it will be more difficult for Richardson to find housing. Many landlords use restrictive tenant screening practices to blacklist tenants with any type of eviction record. And after several bad experiences, Richardson is hesitant to sign a lease again.
“It’s super easy to get evicted, even if you did nothing,” he said. “But most people are gonna assume, ‘Oh, you didn’t pay rent, he damaged something, he was a raging prick, alcoholic.’ It’s human nature. For some reason, people just tend to assume the worst more often than not.”
‘People are doing everything they can to survive’
The actual cause of most evictions is non-payment, both in Oregon and nationally.
Meanwhile, there’s less money than ever to help people stay in their homes. Eviction prevention programs are losing critical funding at both state and federal levels, making it more difficult than ever to provide the essential emergency rental assistance and legal services that keep families housed.
Pandemic-era federal funding for eviction prevention has all but disappeared. State funding, on the other hand, has shifted priorities. In June, Oregon lawmakers approved House Bill 5011, which reduced the Housing and Community Services Department’s budget by roughly $1 billion over two years. As a result, eviction prevention programs across Oregon have undergone massive cuts.
Legislators chose to defund eviction prevention in response to concerns that the service was akin to a guaranteed basic income program or that emergency rent assistance was merely a landlord subsidy program, according to Jones.
“I think that legislators have been deeply frustrated with eviction prevention. It doesn’t seem to have an end to it,” Jones said. “There was an unspoken desire, I think, to move on, to find ‘an exit ramp,’ as I heard several people say back then.”
Too often, he said, low-income people are blamed for their misfortunes, when in reality, they are facing insurmountable financial obstacles such as an injury, a car repair, a layoff or a divorce.
“People are doing everything they can to survive,” Jones said. “They are living in the six inches in front of their face, all of the time, in this economy, and so they’re making the only choice that seems viable to them in the moment.”
With just a couple weeks to go in this year’s short legislative session, he hopes Oregon lawmakers will prioritize eviction prevention funding, rather than leave behind pandemic-era social safety nets.
“This is not a great environment for low-income folks in Oregon,” Jones said.
That assessment is backed up by the overwhelming number of people looking for help in fighting an eviction.
Attorneys at the Oregon Law Center’s Eviction Defense Project field about 10,000 inquiries a year from tenants facing eviction, according to Becky Straus, the organization’s managing attorney. Dramatic reductions in state funding mean Oregon Law Center is trying to meet that need with far fewer staff members. After having to cut nearly one-third of its staff, the organization’s 12 remaining attorneys can provide free legal services to only a fraction of tenants seeking their support.
Of the 2,788 Oregon families who faced eviction in court in January, nearly half — 1,193 — were Multnomah County residents. Oregon Law Center has four attorneys dedicated to helping tenants in Multnomah County.
Yet eviction prevention is possibly the most effective way to reduce homelessness, Straus said. And it’s fiscally responsible, preventing steeper expenses down the road.
“Oftentimes, one month of rent can stabilize a family,” Straus said. “Whereas the public cost of allowing people to fall into homelessness extends out to emergency room visits, hospitalizations, behavioral health crises, child welfare involvement, law-enforcement, shelter operations. These are all collateral extensions of our failure to stop eviction at the upstream.”
The current legislative session, set to adjourn March 8, will determine the state’s budget allocations. Oregon Law Center is asking for $10 million to restore eviction prevention support and keep families housed with emergency rental assistance.
“Our clients are inspiring,” Straus said. “They’re hard-working families, they’re seniors who have worked their whole lives who are now on a fixed income, they’re survivors of domestic violence. All of us and all of our neighbors are often just one major event — a divorce, a layoff, a medical emergency — from eviction and so we believe strongly that the resources should be there for people when they need it.”
This article appears in March 4, 2026.