A commanding majority of people who responded to a survey by the Community Alliance of Tenants want their rents and mortgages suspended entirely for the duration of the coronavirus pandemic.
Some of them expressed a willingness to wage a rent strike to enforce such a suspension.
Jensi Albright, the community engagement director of CAT, shared the results of the poll during a teleconference April 24. She said 80% of those surveyed favored a suspension of rent (and back rent) during the health crisis.
And 75% supported a similar suspension on current and back payments on utility bills.
Support for a rent strike was less robust. Only 18% support a strike, Albright told alliance leaders and supporters during Friday’s video conference. Support was even lower among renters who don’t speak English, she said, perhaps because their situations are already precarious.
“We are looking at a situation where there’s equal or more financial stress because there are lot of folks who aren’t able to get all of the federal benefits,” she said.
Despite the low polling results, she said, support for a strike or other form of direct action seems to be growing as people become increasingly restive about their ability to pay their rent.
COVID-19: Renters push for support as uncertainty looms
According to the survey, 30% of respondents said they could keep up with their rent only through April.
Renters face a frightening math problem, said attorney Emily Rena-Dozier, of Legal Aid Services of Oregon, during a presentation at the teleconference.
As it stands, the eviction moratorium Gov. Kate Brown imposed by an executive order expires at the end of June. Multnomah County commissioners granted renters in the county an additional six-month repayment grace period after the emergency declaration ends.
Renters in other jurisdictions may also be granted grace periods, Rena-Dozier said.
Tenants in Beaverton, for example, have until September to pay back rent. Hillsboro residents have six months. Both Hillsboro and Beaverton renters must also provide documentation that their incomes were affected by the pandemic.
Meanwhile, the money owed to landlords continues to mount. It’s not a moratorium on rent; it’s a moratorium on evicting people for not paying rent. Once the emergency declaration and grace period end, landlords can demand all the money they’re owned — immediately — and begin eviction proceedings if they don’t receive it.
“It’s a scary thing,” Rena-Dozier said. “A lot of people are going to end up owing a lot of money after the moratorium.”
Rena-Dozier said she can offer little comfort to scared renters.
“We don’t really have a good solution right now for getting people caught up with that rent,” she said.
The best option at the moment is for people to continue to pay their rent as best they can and set up payment plans with their landlords now to avoid large lump sums later, she said.
“It’s not always a bad idea for a tenant to sign a repayment plan, if the tenant can afford it,” she said.
Chances are slim the Legislature will freeze or cancel rents entirely, Rena-Dozier said.
“It’s pretty hypothetical,” she said. “It’s hard to imagine a legal solution where landlords are told they can’t collect rent. It would have to involve the landlord getting paid by somebody else.”
COVID-19: Housing-insecure Oregonians left in the lurch, eager for Legislature to convene
On the federal level, U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) introduced House Resolution 6515 on April 17 to suspend rent and mortgage payments nationwide during the pandemic.
“It’s a really, really beautiful bill,” said Rachel Pfeffer, interim executive director of CAT.
The bill’s 13 co-signers don’t include any members of Oregon’s congressional delegation. “So, boo on Oregon, and let’s get them to sign onto it,” Pfeffer said.
Skopos Labs, which uses an artificial-intelligence algorithm to predict the outcome of legislation, gives Ilhan’s bill a 5% chance of passing.
Market forces may eventually drive down rents, Rena-Dozier said, but it’s hard to say how things will shake out with rents in the wake of the pandemic.
“I don’t know what it’s going to look like,” she said. “I don’t think anyone knows what it’s going to look like.”
Not all landlords are obeying the moratorium, Rena-Dozier said.
“We have been getting reports of landlords taking the law into their own hands and ousting tenants,” she said.
Tenants have a right to their homes unless landlords obtain legal judgments of evictions. If landlords disobey the law, Rena-Dozier said, police can help people return to their homes.
Residents also have the legal right to return home by hiring a locksmith or climbing in a window, she said.
“For many, many people in our community, that’s not feasible, and I don’t want to be cavalier about that,” she said.
More feasible, she told alliance leaders, is that people can sue landlords for two months’ rent.
Rena-Dozier said this is a unique moment in the history of landlord-tenant law.
“This is the first time in my career as an attorney I’ve been able to tell landlords they’re not just breaking the law; they’re committing a crime,” she said.
Marih Alyn-Claire, an outreach activist with the alliance, said Friday’s teleconference vividly illustrated some of the challenges faced by renters during the health and economic crises wrought by the pandemic.
“We need to think about what we can do to protect ourselves long term,” Alyn-Claire said. “That’s when we’re going to be really vulnerable.”
An alliance member identified only as Brigid said she is not without sympathy for the landlords.
“We’re all kind of lost,” Brigid said. “We’re all in the same boat at different levels.”
Email Staff Writer Tom Henderson at thenderson@streetroots.org.