CAT Board Releases Statement on Oregon Housing Crisis Response
(Aug 19, 2021) STATEMENT - Oregon Pandemic Renters' Emergency Response is A Failure - Extend the Moratorium Now!
Oregon’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic eviction crisis is an absolute failure. With both state and federal evictions expiring, our state is looking at 125,000+ evictions, while millions more Americans across the country teeter on the brink of eviction.
The Community Alliance of Tenants (CAT) has demanded many times for leaders to extend the moratorium until all rent relief is dispersed. We ask that all rent burden be restored to at least pre-pandemic levels. However, these demands have floundered in committees. Although legislators express their support of bills that would relieve tenants, we still do not have a solution to the crisis. Grassroots organizations such as CAT have filled the gaps in our communities, helping tenants to fend off inevitable evictions. However, mutual aid will not make this problem go away.
How much is 125,000 evictions, really? The number represents about 3 in every 100 Oregonians. The frightening fact is this number is merely the number of households that could receive eviction notices very soon here, not the number of people affected by those evictions. So we do not know the actual scale of these evictions. Entire families, friends, and networks could be broken up by these mass evictions. Despite tenant groups’ calls for action, there are only stopgap measures from the Biden administration, Congress, our state officials, counties, and cities.
This is no time to act “normal.” This global emergency caused us here at CAT declaring a Renters SOS back in 2015. We NEVER lifted it. But instead of taking bold sweeping actions to protect renters then, our leaders abandoned tenants in their time of greatest need. We saw more tents, and more expensive towers go up around the state while our Black, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Latinx, immigrant, and refugee communities slipped further into the jaws of the eviction machines.
Now, on the heels of a global pandemic, historic racial justice protests, massive wildfires that destroyed entire towns, and a massive rush to re-open Oregon’s businesses, we see scores of our most vulnerable residents uncertain if there’s a place they can even call home anymore in this new “normal.”
It is time for elected officials to step up, and stop being scared. What we should fear is inaction.
Elected officials, listen!: Enact an eviction moratorium that allows states to disperse all rent relief dollars in an efficient way. Let’s make sure the rent burden is brought back down to pre-pandemic level or eliminated altogether. Let’s heal the wounds of this pandemic, and make sure that we tackle the root issues that have put Oregon in a Renters State of Emergency for more than half a decade.
Time is ticking. Cancel the rent until we cancel COVID.
- Community Alliance of Tenants Board