Kelly Kenoyer
Of The New Era
A wave of evictions may occur once the statewide moratorium on evictions runs out on Sept. 30, experts say, but landlord organizations and service providers alike are trying to prepare and prevent disaster.
The Community Services Consortium, a regional community action agency, is working to prevent as many evictions as possible with rental assistance and other measures meant to prevent people from falling into homelessness. Landlord organizations, meanwhile, are hoping for legislative intervention to stay afloat.
CSC Executive Director Pegge McGuire said the organization’s mission is to “eliminate poverty and eliminate the root causes of poverty.” She said it’s a lofty goal that’s unlikely to occur, but “we will continue to try to stabilize people’s lives and help them reach their goals.”
Many of the consortium’s 75,000 yearly clients are working people, McGuire said, who are stuck in jobs that don’t pay a high wage. She said “more and more people are falling into homelessness” in east Linn County, possibly because of rising housing costs.
The organization has some statewide and federal funding available from the CARES act to help with rent payments: $3.5 million for renters in Linn, Benton and Lincoln counties. So far, CSC has served over 650 individuals facing financial loss from the pandemic, totaling over $1,057,000 in assistance.
McGuire hopes needy families will apply for rental assistance sooner rather than later, because the funds can’t be used after December. “We’ve paid up the six month’s rent. We’re paying their entire arrearage, and then we’re trying to pay them as far forward as we can,” she said. “The best thing we can do is keep people housed who are already housed,” she said, because keeping routines like childcare and a walkable job location help lend stability to people’s lives.
Sweet Home landlords have already benefited from CSC’s payments: East Linn Property Management has helped put some of its tenants in contact with the organization to facilitate rent payment.
Office Manager Karyn Hartsook said 1 to 2 percent of the company’s tenants haven’t been paying rent, some by choice, who “take advantage of the situation.” Others “have had some trouble paying, but we’ve been able to help them get in contact with agencies to help them through the situation,” she said.
Sweet Home Emergency Ministries, CSC, and a few churches in town have been involved in helping tenants pay bills after they lost their jobs or had hours reduced, Hartsook said.
“Most people are continuing to do the right thing and pay rent, especially if they are working,” she added. “We are just so pleased and impressed with them.”
When the eviction moratorium ends, Hartsook said the non-paying tenants will need to make arrangements with their landlords to pay back the unpaid rent. Otherwise, “they’ll, unfortunately, be asked to leave,” she said. “These landlords haven’t been paid in four months, and that’s just not fair to them.”
The picture isn’t so rosy for other landlords in the region, however.
Some in Linn, Benton and Lincoln counties have told McGuire that about 20 percent of people aren’t paying rent.
“If they can’t pay that next month’s rent in October, that’s 20 percent of the people who could end up out on the street,” she said. A census survey found that 134,741 renters in Oregon did not pay their June rent, with an additional 3,234 indicating they had deferred their June rent payment. A survey by MultiFamily NW found that 11.1 percent of rental households in Oregon had not paid rent by Aug. 8, which was actually an improvement from the previous month.
McGuire doesn’t believe that all renters who are behind on payments will be evicted when the moratorium ends in October. “The landlords are going to be in a difficult situation because they’re going to have all kinds of vacancies,” she said, so a lot of landlords will likely work with their renters rather than kick them out.
Jim Straub, a landlord advocate representing 7,500 members through the Oregon Rental Housing Association, said it’s true that landlords aren’t likely to kick out every renter who’s late on their payments, though “there’s a substantial backlog” of planned evictions from landlords planning to sell their rentals or who don’t get along well with specific tenants.
Aside from those cases, he said, many landlords want to work with tenants because removing them would likely erase their chances of getting the months of lost rent back.
“The overall consensus is that we’re hoping more federal money will become available and there will be some relief,” he said. “The only way we can participate in any federal relief funds is if we have an active tenant.”
Straub notes the Oregon Legislature is also working on options for landlords and tenants alike to prevent an eviction crisis in October.
“A lot of landlords are maxing out credit cards,” he said, because utility payments and maintenance costs have continued even as tenants aren’t paying rent. Some tenants are contacting landlords and paying what they can, he said, which is appreciated.
Straub’s biggest fear, in terms of legislation, is rent forgiveness, he said.
If local landlords are “stuck holding the bag,” he said, many of them will have to sell to “a large, out-of-state conglomerate.” That would hurt tenants too, he said, because “local landlords are real people who are much more forgiving.”
“If given a choice, most people would prefer a private landlord.”
And it’s far preferable to be housed than unhoused, McGuire said.
For those struggling with poverty, she said, housing stability is the cornerstone of a stable life. “If you are worried about where you’re going to stay tonight, you can hardly focus on anything else. You can’t go out and get a job, you have no place to leave your stuff.
“That kind of stress makes people sick, mentally, emotionally and physically.”
For more information about CSC’s rental assistance programs, go to Community Services Consortium.