Kayse Jama and Julie Fahey
Jama, a Democrat, represents Senate District 24-Portland in the Oregon Legislature and chairs the Senate Committee on Housing. Fahey, a Democrat, represents House District 14-West Eugene/Junction City in the Oregon Legislature and chairs the House Committee on Housing.
Since the start of the pandemic, our state has been committed to keeping Oregonians in their homes during this crisis. We have launched mortgage and rental assistance programs, and we have enacted foreclosure and eviction protections that successfully kept people housed.
But currently, more than 10,000 Oregon families risk losing their homes through no fault of their own. They have filled out an application for rental assistance, and yet they still face eviction due to delays in processing those applications.
No Oregonian should be evicted while rental assistance is on the way. That is why we support a special legislative session called by Gov. Kate Brown for Dec. 13. As chairs of the Oregon House and Senate Committees on Housing, we have crafted a plan that can keep people housed during the holiday season while ensuring landlords are fully paid.
In June of this year, a moratorium on evictions was coming to an end and nearly $300 million in federal funding for rent assistance had been made available through the newly-launched Oregon Emergency Rental Assistance Program. The Legislature recognized the need to protect tenants from eviction while these funds were being distributed, passing Senate Bill 278 in a nearly-unanimous bipartisan vote.
This “safe harbor” bill created a 60-day window temporarily protecting who have applied for rental assistance from eviction for nonpayment of rent. The law was designed to give the state and its partners more time to process applications and send money to landlords. But because of the large number of applications, it has taken much longer than anticipated for rental assistance providers in some parts of the state to process applications, including one county with an average time to process of 130 days.
This means that more than 10,000 low-income households who have applied for assistance are currently past their eviction safe harbor window. They could be evicted at any moment now, even though we have the funds to help them. The Legislature must extend this eviction safe harbor period to protect these Oregonians while their applications are being processed.
For the special session, we plan to introduce a bill that will provide an additional $200 million in state funding to support both tenants and landlords. The money would go to rental assistance, eviction prevention services and program to make landlords whole for any rent during the safe harbor period that is not covered by rental assistance. These investments will be paired with an extension to the safe harbor that will protect renters while their application is being processed.
With this plan, we can ensure that tenants can continue to apply for assistance and that landlords who are waiting on rent will be paid. In addition, the extra funding would help address another problem – Oregonians in need have requested more rental assistance than the federal government has allocated, forcing the state to pause new applications to the Oregon Emergency Rental Assistance Program, even though the need for rental assistance is still great.
Oregon isn’t the only state where the high level of need has led to challenges in getting rental assistance out the door, and we aren’t the only state that has enacted an eviction safe harbor to protect tenants in this situation. Minnesota and Nevada both passed bipartisan legislation to create eviction safe harbor policies for tenants with pending applications. Now, it’s our turn to show up and do the same.
Evictions have devastating consequences for individuals, families, and communities. Even a short period of homelessness or housing instability can do generational damage. As a state, it is far more difficult and expensive to reach people who have already lost stable housing than it is to prevent an eviction.
It would be tragic if Oregonians lose their homes because the money available to help them doesn’t reach them in time. Legislators have the power and responsibility to prevent this from happening by approving our plan at next week’s special session.