Senate Committee on Housing and Development heard testimony Jan. 30 from landlords, tenants and housing advocates on Senate Bill 799
When her tenants fail to pay rent, Dianne Cassidy of Gladstone wants to evict them as efficiently as possible.
Otherwise, she told Oregon lawmakers, she faces a disturbing alternative.
"I am being forced to personally support strangers with whom I have no affiliation," Cassidy said.
Members of the Senate Committee on Housing and Development heard testimony Jan. 30 from landlords, tenants and housing advocates on Senate Bill 799. The bill requires residential landlords to give evicted tenants more time to pay rent or find other places to live.
Jill Koehmstedt would have liked more time before facing a disturbing alternative.
Koehmstedt had no affiliation — personal or professional — with Cassidy. A different landlord filed an eviction against the 36-year-old and her three children two days before Christmas in 2019. By May 2020, the family lost their home.
"We have been living in a tent since June, and my heart is broken from it," she wrote on Facebook in October 2020 after living in Salem's Wallace Marine and Cascades Gateway parks.
"I will literally never be the same person," she continued. "We have been dragging our three children through this disaster. We are working with numerous agencies to help get housing, but finding a place was nearly impossible before the pandemic hit. Now it's even harder. I feel like time is running out."
She was right. She died from an infection while living in Cascades Gateway Park Nov. 25, 2020.
Jimmy Jones read Koehmstedt's Facebook posts into the record. The executive director of the Mid-Willamette Valley Community Action Agency told committee members they can expect more deaths.
"There is a coming homeless wave that will make what we have right now seem like a golden age when it's done," Jones said. "We have a 14.6% potential rental increase here in 2023. Homelessness in Oregon has increased by 22.5% since 2020 at a time when national homelessness has only increased by 0.3% in the same period of time."
NEWS: Housing issues promise to dominate legislative session
Specifically, Senate Bill 799 gives tenants a 60-day "safe harbor” period — preventing landlords from evicting tenants who have a rental assistance application pending — and adds another important provision. Tenants currently have 72 hours to vacate after a final eviction notice is served. The bill extends that period to 10 days and gives tenants the chance to come up with rent money in that 10-day period. Advocates say the bill’s passage would decrease evictions resulting in people being forced from their homes.
Oregon tenants received such protections under emergency legislation passed by lawmakers in 2021 in response to the pandemic. Those protections ended Sept. 30 last year. Landlords urged legislators not to extend them.
"Emergency measures like this are not designed to be permanent public policy solutions," Deborah Imsee, executive director of Multifamily Northwest, testified. "To make them permanent would de-stabilize rental housing further because there's no guarantee that the housing provider will recoup the money they will inevitably lose because of these requirements."
State Sen. Wlnsvey Campos, D-Beaverton, told committee members Oregon's housing emergency is far from over.
"When renters get exorbitant rent increases of the kind we are seeing now — 15%, 32%, 50% — they need to time pull together resources," she said. "They can get quickly pulled under by the rapid wave of eviction court."
Campos is sponsoring a companion bill, Senate Bill 611, which increases the amount of money landlords owe tenants for evicting them through no fault of the tenant.
"As we know, we cannot address homelessness without stabilizing our renters," Campos testified.
Before being elected to the Legislature in 2020, Campos was a caseworker at Family Promise of Beaverton, which provides emergency family shelter and assistance for people experiencing homelessness in Washington County.
"I have made those phone calls to try to get folks that assistance," she said. "I can tell you that, more often than not, it is extremely challenging to get payment within 72 hours."
Extending that period permanently can only help, she added.
"While this policy may have initially meant to only span the length of the pandemic, the benefit of retaining this policy is clear and will have a meaningful impact on our efforts to stabilize communities," Campos said. "If we do not make this permanent, we will see the number of unhoused Oregonians increase significantly."
"We don’t often talk about the shame of eviction, but it’s traumatic and escalated my own struggles with addiction. Having more time would’ve allowed me to prevent the entire thing."
— Lucy Briseno
Program Manager, ARCHES Project
Kamelah Adams told committee members her Portland rent just went up by 12% — making it another $300 per month.
"I haven’t received an eviction notice," she said. "I have not fallen behind. But like many people in our state, I do not have extra room in my budget to absorb this kind of increase. If I were to ever get into a tight spot, I can tell you that 72 hours is not enough time for anyone to make things right. SB 799 proposes giving people 10 days to find rent assistance. That is fair. That is reasonable."
The impact of accelerated evictions is disproportionate, she added.
"All across Portland, I am seeing Black families being displaced further and further outside of the neighborhoods we grew up in, and it’s only getting worse," Adams said.
The American Civil Liberties Union reports landlords file evictions against Black women renters at double the rate (or higher) than their white counterparts in Oregon and 16 other states.
"Communities, like mine, already facing historical and systemic barriers to jobs, housing, health care, opportunity and wealth are paying an unfair price for Oregon’s unfair and rushed eviction laws," Adams said. "My family deserves to stay in the community we call home. Black tenants in Oregon deserve to stay in our homes and our communities."
Patricia Byrum, who earned a master's degree in psychology while experiencing homelessness, testified she received an eviction notice in 2018 after her landlord entered her Keizer apartment illegally and objected to how she had arranged her furniture. She solved that problem and managed to keep her apartment, but more eviction notices followed.
"The notices I’ve received since have been so convoluted that even with two advanced degrees, I was unable to parse out not only what the notice was for but also what my next steps were," she told lawmakers. "I needed time. I needed time to contact legal aid services and remedy the situation ... I needed time to translate the legalese sent to me into something digestible."
Lucy Briseno is the program manager for the day center at Salem's ARCHES Project, which provides services for people experiencing homelessness. The Independence resident told committee members she comes to her work from personal experience.
She and her three children were homeless for 20 months after being evicted because she was $1 short on rent. They had 72 hours to get out of their home.
"I don’t want anyone to experience what my family went through when we were evicted, especially not when that eviction could be entirely preventable with just a little more time," Briseno said. "We don’t often talk about the shame of eviction, but it’s traumatic and escalated my own struggles with addiction. Having more time would’ve allowed me to prevent the entire thing.
“With 10 days, I could have accessed resources. I could have kept a stable home for my kids, one where they could walk to school. I would have kept my dignity."
Oregon has among the lowest vacancy rates in the nation and highest rents with homeless rates that reflect those rates, testified Sybil Hebb, the director of legislative advocacy at the Oregon Law Center.
"Evictions are part of the cycle of homelessness and linked to spikes in homelessness," she said.
Numerous landlords testified the solution to Oregon's housing crisis is to build more affordable housing.
"We need to fund a permanent, efficient rental assistance program and dramatically expand our supply of rental housing," Imsee said. "The bill does neither of those and does not provide any assurance to renters or housing providers that the rent will be paid."
Hebb agreed it is important to increase the amount of affordable housing but added it will take years for such housing projects to be completed. Meanwhile, people face the immediate threat of eviction and homelessness.
"We know that we must increase supply, but that is not going to be a quick solution," Hebb said. "We have, all across the state and at leadership at all levels, tried to provide services to people who are already living outside. If we do not take steps to stabilize folks who are currently housed, we will be in a perpetual negative cycle."
Kim McCarty, Community Alliance of Tenants executive director, testified that she sees that cycle play out every day.
"Every day, our hotline staff are speaking to tenants," McCarty said. "We talk to hundreds of people per month. It is a crisis. People are on our hotline and crying about 50% rent increases. For your average unit, that's more than $200 per month. For a low-income tenant, any amount of rent increase could result in homelessness."
Because of scarce resources, she said, many agencies won't help a tenant until they have an eviction notice in hand.
"This starts a three-day sprint to find help," McCarty said said. "First, they need to get the help. They need to find the money. They need to cut the check. Then they need to get that money delivered to the landlord. Think about how long it takes most businesses to pay an invoice, and you can see that the timeframe is unreasonable."
Becky Strauss, the managing attorney of Oregon Law Center's eviction defense project, said the 2021 protections worked. At least 80% of the 2,000-plus tenants who sought protections under the emergency provision ultimately stayed in their housing, she said.
"Without those safeguards, the number of people who have been evicted has nearly tripled," Strauss said. "Very clearly, when protections are in place, tenants are more likely than not to stay in their homes. That's what our data is showing us. In the absence of protections, tenants in eviction courts are more likely than not to lose their homes."
Tenants may not lose their homes, but Jason Miller, the legislative director of the Oregon Rental Housing Association, testified landlords will respond by imposing higher deposits and stricter requirements for getting a rental unit. After all, he told lawmakers, landlords face their own hardships if they have to wait longer for rent money.
"They'll have to take money from their family budget, retirement or savings or even borrow money to pay expenses," he said.
Cassidy insisted she's not heartless.
"I know about evictions," she said. "I have great sympathy for the people who struggle, but I have to treat them all the same — whether they're the people destroying my apartments or the little old lady who I just adore."
They all know what rent is, she added. "When they come up short, they know in advance that something is going to happen."
Jennifer Parrish Taylor, the director of advocacy at the Urban League of Portland, said what many Oregonians know about rent is that it is climbing beyond their reach.
"For many, housing in Oregon is too precarious, unaffordable and many are one life event away from not being able to cover monthly necessities such as rent," she told legislators. "We must look at ways to keep currently housed Oregonians in their homes in the face of skyrocketing rents."
What's next?
Beyond Senate Bill 799, most of the bills affecting housing and homelessness are parked in committees without any hearings or work sessions scheduled.
Jones told Street Roots he’s not concerned about the seemingly sluggish start to the legislative session.
"It’s pretty much (Standard Operating Procedure) for a full session," he said. "It's a marathon and less of a sprint. There’s also a great deal of focus on getting the governor’s housing budget through the legislature. That will likely be addressed first, which may slow down other matters."
Tom Henderson covers the Legislature for Street Roots. He can be reached at thenderson@streetroots.org.
Editor’s note: Sybil Hebb, a source quoted in this story, is a member of the Street Roots board of directors. Street Roots board members are not monetarily compensated and are not involved in the editorial process.
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
