With help from mutual aid group Don’t Evict PDX, tenants receive rental assistance funds, guidance on eviction notices and support for tenant advocacy and organizing
In early December, a mutual aid request to help a tenant who needed $4,980 by Dec. 6 to avoid eviction appeared on local coalition Don’t Evict PDX, or DEPDX’s, Instagram feed.
The mutual aid request happened after two members of DEPDX noticed the person was experiencing a common theme with recent evictions — rental assistance falling through.
“She came up and talked to me and happened to be in the situation that we had been noticing as observers in this system, over and over again — people getting screwed over by rental assistance,” Ally Jeidy, DEPDX member, said. “Either at the last second or between their first appearance for eviction court and their trial or their stipulated agreement deadline, the rental assistance fell through.”
Members of DEPDX said the tenant was able to obtain the needed funds through a combination of $560 DEPDX raised for her, as well as aid from family. The tenant did not receive the rental assistance she requested. The tenant would have likely faced eviction if she was unable to secure funds from other sources.
According to research from Evicted in Oregon, a research and advocacy project started by Portland State University faculty, about 75% of all evictions in Oregon are for nonpayment. In the first 10 months of 2022, Oregon landlords and property managers filed 14,337 evictions, as Street Roots reported in November.
The swell of evictions, particularly for nonpayment, makes groups like DEPDX especially relevant, and mutual aid is only a small part of what the group does. DEPDX also works with tenants to prevent evictions before they occur, often through education and helping tenants organize.
DEPDX started as an organization of fellow tenants watching eviction court when they noticed evictions were still happening throughout the pandemic eviction moratorium, according to its members.
DEPDX members’ observations of eviction court assisted Evicted in Oregon’s first research project, according to Pfeiffer Kennedy, DEPDX member.
The project provided an alarming statistic: Only 27% of tenants with nonpayment eviction cases successfully claimed the safe harbor provision that was temporarily available to renters earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic. While some analyses might imply this is due to failure to apply for the program, Kennedy said it is also due to lack of accessibility.
Community organizing
When tenants in the Falcon Art Community learned in March 2021 there was going to be an adjustment to the property line of their apartment building, it kicked off a flurry of organizing to fight back.
The adjustment was to cut off use of their treasured community garden, which, in addition to being a sacred space for tenants that hosted things like a memorial service and wedding, was the only outside space attached to their building available to them during the COVID-19 lockdown.
Facing the loss of the garden, tenants formed the Falcon Collective tenants union, according to tenants who wanted to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from their landlord.
The garden, which had fallen into disuse, was the subject of a recent push for revitalization by tenants living in the apartment building. A Falcon Collective tenants union member said apartment management told tenants they were wasting their time because the land was being sold.
Falcon Art Community property management did not respond to requests for comment from Street Roots at the time of publication.
DEPDX helped the Falcon Collective early on by helping draft bylaws, acting as a sounding board for different ideas the group had and helping the tenants understand when property management was crossing a line.
The proverbial line was crossed when the collective put on an event to raise awareness of their situation, according to tenants. Apartment management threatened the tenants with criminal charges when notified of the event, such as trespassing, if they kept doing anything on the land, according to tenants.
“And (DEPDX) was like, ‘this is retaliation,” a tenant leader from the collective said.
Fortunately for tenants, and possibly for property management as well, management backed off completely after the Falcon Collective accused property management of retaliation, according to tenants.
Tenants found the company developing the land was going to present at an upcoming Northeast Coalition of Neighborhoods meeting. They petitioned the coalition to grant their tenants’ organization an equal amount of time to present on the land.
As far as the Falcon Collective knows, development is now on pause.
“But that doesn’t mean they won’t show up with a bulldozer or whatever in a couple days,” the same tenant said. “It’s a long game.”
DEPDX can help tenants in other ways, sometimes preventing evictions entirely.
Education as defense
All too often, DEPDX member Cecilia Powers said, landlords will serve tenants an eviction notice and tenants, believing they did something to warrant an eviction, won’t even bother to show up to their court date and will proceed to vacate willingly.
Powers said a lot of tenants don’t know an “eviction notice” is not an actual eviction and that evictions will show up on someone’s record if they don’t show up for their court date, even if they’ve already vacated a dwelling. So, rather than voluntarily vacate, tenants who come to DEPDX can connect with a network of experts who know the system and can pave the way to a more successful path ahead.
Education and skill sharing form the backbone of what DEPDX does, Powers said. This skill sharing helped tenants at Everett Station Lofts fight back against an eviction notice.
A tenant from the Everett Station Lofts Tenants Association who wanted to remain anonymous said they were experiencing problems with management ignoring maintenance issues as well as failure to communicate different issues around the property, such as a major construction project on the facade of the building.
To raise awareness of the issues, the tenant started posting flyers around the building. Soon after, the tenant said they received a notice demanding they stop posting the flyers or face eviction.
Tenants went to DEPDX, which connected them to a legal team that helped write a cease and desist letter, stating the notice was clearly retaliatory and demanding building management retract the threat. The threat was not rescinded, but tenants have not received additional eviction notices from management, the Everett Station Lofts tenant said.
Everett Station Lofts property management did not respond to requests for comment from Street Roots at the time of publication.
Having a rich data source on evictions from Evicted in Oregon, DEPDX can pinpoint where evictions are particularly dense, go to those tenants and help them organize.
“We stay in close contact with the people in these tenant associations that we help build,” Powers said. “And we pass on knowledge, and we find resources whenever needed.”
There’s a long list of objectives DEPDX works with tenants to achieve. Sometimes it’s just initial contact and then discussions to help tenants work toward a goal. Sometimes they sit down with tenants after getting communication from the landlord and break down the communication and next steps. All of this is done without people needing to become members or pay dues.
Rocky terrain
Working with tenants to fight back against landlords comes at a time when homelessness and evictions are hot topics with Portlanders. Mayor Ted Wheeler and Commissioner Dan Ryan’s five October 2022 resolutions on homelessness included a ban on unsanctioned camping and the construction of compulsory mass homeless encampments, which would host up to 250 people, in an apparent attempt to sidestep Martin v. Boise, which prohibits municipalities from imposing legal penalties for sleeping in public when sufficient shelter beds are not available.
The proposals, which passed Portland City Council by a 4-1 margin Nov. 3, drew criticism from local homelessness experts and homeless Portlanders. Critics note shelters work best when they are temporary, voluntary and trauma-informed and argue the best solution to ending homelessness is to provide ready-made housing like vacant hotels or other buildings.
“The best way to prevent houselessness is to make sure that people are able to stay safely housed,” Anna Kemper, HereTogether Oregon communications director, said.
Making sure people stay housed can be difficult when homelessness is on the rise. According to Kemper, families continue to become unhoused due to increased inflation, rising housing costs and impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the 2022 Multnomah County Point-in-Time Count report, 24% of those experiencing unsheltered homelessness reported COVID-related reasons as the cause.
Other efforts on the same front
Eviction Representation for All, a grassroots Portland group that successfully gained enough signatures to put a measure on the May 2023 county ballot for a right to counsel in eviction court, is another group trying to end or reduce evictions.
While the group awaits county validation of signatures, it’s planning its get-out-the-vote strategy.
Colleen Carroll, a volunteer organizer for the campaign, said she thinks the group experienced so much success because it’s made up of tenants and tenant organizations already fighting for tenants in varying capacities. Some people organized around inconsistent schedules regarding laundry usage or a billing system for their utilities, while other groups organized specifically around eviction defense.
“So starting from there and really being clear that that's who the coalition was for, that set the tone,” Carroll said.
An additional factor in the near future might make it even harder for Oregonians to pay rent in 2023. The state Office of Economic Analysis approved a 14.6% rent increase cap in 2023 on buildings at least 15 years old — a nearly 5% jump from 2022. The increase means landlords could require Oregon renters to pay thousands more in rent on their homes, something many Oregonians can’t afford, making eviction defense all the more relevant.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article contained an inaccurate description of DEPDX’s involvement with Evicted in Oregon’s first research project. The corrected sentence reads, “DEPDX members’ observations of eviction court assisted Evicted in Oregon’s first research project, according to Pfeiffer Kennedy, DEPDX member.” Street Roots regrets this error
Street Roots is an award-winning weekly investigative publication covering economic, environmental and social inequity. The newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Street Roots newspaper operates independently of Street Roots advocacy and is a part of the Street Roots organization. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.
© 2023 Street Roots. All rights reserved. | To request permission to reuse content, email editor@streetroots.org or call 503-228-5657, ext. 404
