An Open Letter to Governor Brown

Oregon Renters need Clear, Consistent, and Comprehensive Relief, Now.

I am writing this with an urgent request:

Please read this letter, please take it seriously.

Without being a renter, a low-income renter, or without experience “organizing in the trenches” or otherwise providing direct service to vulnerable tenants, it is impossible to know how critically important it is that the state take immediate and comprehensive action for renters. Half measures now will lead unmitigated chaos, confusion and irreparable harm later, and less ability for renters to stay home and stay safe now.

3/22/20

Dear Governor Brown,

At Friday evening’s press conference you announced that news was coming on Monday about housing. I started drafting this letter then, with extreme concern that whatever would be announced would fall short of what was needed. As of this writing, an Executive Order for a statewide moratorium on evictions has now been announced.

I appreciate very much that the statewide moratorium is more comprehensive in several ways than Multnomah County’s, by including no-cause evictions and lease non-renewals, and not requiring a documentation or notice burden on renters. But as a volunteer tenant advocate and co-chair of Portland Tenants United — with an inbox blowing up with questions from panicked renters — there are still many significant issues and gaps that need to be addressed in order to be able to deliver clear and consistent information to renters who are impacted by COVID-19 and the consequent economic crisis so that we can navigate the days ahead without the psychological terror of worrying about rent we can’t pay.

This is urgent. We can’t do it in multiple steps after being told “no” first. We already don’t have a reliable way to get information to renters across the state, many of which don’t speak English or have access to or fluency in using the internet or email. Mixed messages, unclear directives, and plans that change daily make it impossible.

If you think I’m just too hard to please, here’s a Facebook post from a Portland area tenant attorney, in response to today’s announcement of the moratorium:

Your moratorium prevents the sheriff from showing up, which is a critical part of the solution, but a huge number of evictions never involve the sheriff, and your moratorium does nothing to address that.

Landlords can still give no-cause notices, threaten eviction with 72-hour notices, and 14-day notices for minor non-material lease violations. Should anyone feel that their housing is in peril because they received a for-cause eviction notice because their balcony is too messy right now? (This is the reality of excluding all for-cause evictions from your moratorium.)

And landlords can still assess usurious late fees (as high as $175! For being a dollar short by the 5th of the month!), they can still file an FED, still serve the papers using a private process server (since law enforcement can’t do it), and courtrooms can still be packed to the gills with our poorest, most vulnerable tenants — including the elderly, disabled, and medically fragile — in addition to an untold number of newly laid off or sick tenants, while Oregonians are otherwise being ordered to “Stay Home, Stay Safe”.

How can we “Stay Home, Stay Safe” when we have to show up to eviction court? Landlords are telling their renters to pay up now or face eviction, or issuing rent increase letters and no-cause evictions, and when the experts can’t even agree on what the accurate information is because we’re all hearing different things from different places, how can we possibly stay home and stay safe when we have no idea whether we’re protected from losing our home or not? Or when we kick ourselves out of it to avoid going to court?

We need a plan that doesn’t raise more questions than it answers, and doesn’t leave huge swaths of vulnerable people or exhausted frontline workers triaging the escalating crisis wondering what it means for them.

I don’t say this because I think you don’t want to do it right, but because if there were ever a time to have someone with current and lived experience at the table to get it right, it’s now. If you’re not a vulnerable renter, if you’re not running the renter-crisis line (which is what my inbox and FB notifications essentially serves as an arm of), then you just can’t know how bad it is on the ground, and thus what the situation demands.

We have to get this right because people are terrified.They are working when they should be quarantining because they have to pay rent. They are using money that they’ll need for food to be able to pay rent now, in case they can’t later, because we all know the rent eats first. They are starting to commit “housing suicide” — planning to move before the end of the month because they won’t be able to afford rent anymore in April. Move where? With what income?

I know that some landlords also have mortgages to pay, and I’m not here to say that doesn’t matter, but the bullying and harassment that I’ve heard of in just the last few days by landlords who want to force their newly-unemployed or already vulnerable tenants out now before things get worse, has been devastating.

Until the state of emergency has passed, and basic economic stability has been restored:

1. A full and immediate statewide moratorium on no-cause evictions, lease non-renewals, and FEDs filed for all non-safety related evictions, specifically all FEDs that do not use ORS 90.396.

This moratorium needs to explicitly restrict and prohibit landlords from threatening or beginning the process of terminating tenancies, instead of just preventing law enforcement from enforcing eviction judgements, and it must require landlords to affirmatively communicate with their tenants about their rights under the moratorium. Landlords who use fear and intimidation to try to exact rent or force a tenant out without the eviction process should be steeply penalized.

This means:

• Landlords cannot issue warnings or termination notices that send mixed messages to tenants during an eviction moratorium. For example, no 24-hour, 72-hour, or 14-day for-cause notices except in the case that personal safety is at risk.
• All termination notices (no-cause, for-cause, non-renewal) issued before the declaration of moratorium must be rescinded, and landlords must allow 30-day termination notices issued by tenants to be rescinded at the tenants’ discretion for those tenants whose financial or housing situation now necessitates that they stay put.
• Landlords cannot file FEDs unless it is for-cause, and only in the instance that the tenant poses a verifiable and substantial risk to the personal safety of others.
• Already filed FEDs must be dismissed without prejudice and non-compliance hearings must be postponed indefinitely.
• Free and accessible legal assistance for anyone with current FEDs filed against them.

2. Universal Amnesty from Rent, Utilities, and Late Fees throughout the duration of the emergency.

Many of us have lost our jobs and face a future without sick pay or unemployment. And as you no doubt no, rents have skyrocketed over the last several years in Oregon, making it difficult to pay rent in full and on time well before the Coronavirus changed everything. Utility rates have increased as well.

There is no reasonable plan that waives rent now but requires us to pay it back in the future, while also being required to pay rent as usual. And with late fees as high as $150–175 in Oregon, accrued rent debt for 1–2 months (or more) will be an obligation that will be impossible for many renters to ever meet.

We are already seeing broad action for mortgage relief on the federal level covering 65% of all US mortgages, with other lenders expected to follow suit. This relief requires landlords to do nothing more than notify their lenders that they can’t pay on time, and then will either reduce the payments or move them to the end of the loan. Why should renters accrue usurious late fees and debt we won’t be able to pay while our landlords can take a break from paying the mortgage with a simple phone call?

3. Cancel all Scheduled Rent Increases, and Lift the Ban on local Rent Control

In addition to inability to pay regular rent in April, and beyond, many renters have rent increases going into effect in April. And in response to the moratorium being announced in Multnomah County, some landlords are responding by issuing rent increase letters to their tenants!

At present, Mayor Ted Wheeler claims he is powerless to do anything to to take action on this outrageous behavior because of ORS 90.225, despite the fact that the legislature allows an exemption in emergencies via 90.225(5). It’s clear to me that if the Mayor has the power to shut down businesses, waive late fees and mandate repayment plans, and mandate that Portlanders leave the house only for essential reasons, then he can certainly limit rent increases. But the point is that now, more than ever, local leaders need all the tools on the table to do respond to the economic impact on renters and the housing ecosystem, without threat of expensive and frivolous lawsuits by the landlords insisting that their ability to profit during this crisis is more important than a renters’ ability to survive. It is irresponsible to leave this ban in place at this time.

4. Financial Assistance and/or Rent Relief needs to be universal, not means tested, with no documentation burden for the renter.

Asking renters to provide documentation for means-tested and conditional assistance puts an undue burden on renters that will have a negative and disparate impact on those most vulnerable, such as undocumented immigrants, those with language and technology barriers, and those whose legitimate COVID-19 related income loss is hard to document. It is also very hard to communicate these requirements to renters, especially if landlords are not willing to help.

There are definitely landlords who rely on rental payments as a critical form of income that is used for daily living expenses instead of (or in addition to) paying a mortgage. However, there are far fewer of these then there are renters who will be unable to pay rent during this crisis. The majority of multifamily properties are owned by corporations, REITs, or well endowed investors. It is inappropriate to use public assistance to subsidize unrestricted profit seeking at this time.

If any public assistance will be means tested and conditional, then instead of going to tenants to make direct payments to landlords, landlords should be required to prove their financial need.

5. Requirement to Communicate and Record

Landlords must be required to affirmatively communicate information about COVID-19 protections with their tenants, in writing and by email, ASAP, and all termination notices must be recorded with the state so that we can begin to gather the data needed to track COVID-19s impact on our existing housing crisis, and intervene as necessary.

This is what we need. Anything less will lead to mass confusion, displacement, chaos, and make the job of advocates getting the word out to renters much harder.

These recommendations are constructed to meet three primary goals:

• Adhere to rigorous “Stay Home, Stay Safe” social distancing standards to reduce spread of the virus.
• Safeguard the emotional and psychological well-being of vulnerable people so that they can prioritize their physical health and public health recommendations.
• Mitigate the catastrophic impact of the oncoming economic disaster for those who have the fewest resources and the highest barriers to economic security and recovery.

In order to “Stay Home, Stay Safe” it is critical that the state act swiftly and comprehensively to ensure housing and financial stability, especially for those most vulnerable, throughout the emergency declaration period. It may seem as simple as prohibiting law enforcement from enforcing or executing evictions, which is what your moratorium accomplishes, but as a tenant organizer with deep and intimate knowledge of landlord-tenant issues and of the eviction process (which starts well before courts or law enforcement ever get involved), we need to do much more to deliver renters the relief that they need right now in this uncertain time.

It isn’t just that the “relief” is the nice or morally right thing to do, it’s also critical to the goals of “Stay Home. Stay Safe.” Even if we had a way to get accurate information to all the renters in Oregon, if their landlord says otherwise or gives them a 72-hour notice — or is still able to file an FED which can be enforced as soon as the declaration is lifted — then renters will continue to panic and will not be able to prioritize their physical and financial health, much less the health of the community at large. How could they not if the sheriff will be waiting to lock them out the moment the emergency is over?