At 8 a.m. on a given weekday, at the Multnomah County Circuit Courthouse downtown Portland, we pick up a docket with between 30 and 50 tenants slated for a first court appearance in their eviction case. Few know when they walk in that 30-49 other people have the same hearing scheduled for 8:45 am, and any of them could be there until midday. Since January, 51% of Oregon’s eviction cases were filed in Multnomah County; most – 88% – were for nonpayment. Almost all begin and end without the person facing eviction receiving legal advice.[1]
Five days a week, tenants arrive before “first appearance” and find a seat in the Crane Room, an open lobby area with tall windows and ample tables and chairs. They wait to be called into the courtroom, where the judge does roll call through the day’s docket. A look around the Crane Room reveals people facing eviction are not a representative sample of Multnomah County’s population. There are more people of color, more women, and they are generally older.
In the Crane Room, 51% of tenants we helped identified as a Person of Color, compared to 31% in Multnomah overall.[2] Adults over 50 are the fastest growing homeless demographic in the county, are mostly homeless for the first time, and age 3-4X faster than their housed counterparts.[3] That tenants in eviction court reflect the homeless population is not a coincidence; eviction is the leading cause of homelessness.[4]
Members of The Commons Law Center’s Tenant Eviction Defense (TED) team walk around the Crane Room and approach tenants, who are unsure of what they are supposed to do next, asking if they are interested in free legal counsel for the day’s hearing. Usually, they have questions about the service, then are interested in speaking with our attorney. Something clients often say is I’m here because I can’t pay, so there’s nothing I can do to stop eviction. This is not necessarily true, but it shows that tenants know little about their rights and options even after they show up to court, where large television displays scroll through informational slides about new laws and available rental assistance, where rental assistance sits at a nearby table.
Over the intercom, sometime before 9 a.m., anyone present for a landlord-tenant matter is instructed to go to Courtroom A. The courtroom door opens and tenants sit and wait for the judge to roll call the cases. In most cases – 80% – a landlord lawyer or agent approaches the bench to show they are handling the negotiations for the plaintiff.[5] When called as defendants, tenants rise to show they are present and, if a tenant has requested our counsel, our attorney presents themselves on the record. The judge informs all tenants they will have an opportunity to negotiate with their landlord or landlord agent the same day; most tenants want to negotiate.
After roll call, tenants file back into the Crane Room and wait. There are many more tenants than landlord lawyers and agents and most have multiple cases, sometimes a dozen. Tenants who sign up to work with TED have to queue with other tenants who signed up, waiting for our attorney to be available to speak with the tenant and then the landlord’s representative to negotiate. It looks somewhat like a DMV, with people waiting anxiously, needing to get back to their jobs, kids, expiring parking meters. Unlike at the DMV, the stakes are high – tenants we speak to consistently say that they arrived at court scared and hopeless.
One tenant client, “Mary,” met us while crying softly in the courtroom and setting a trial date for her eviction case. She’d lived in her apartment for 14 years, was over 50, and primary caretaker for her sister, 67 years old, who lives with her. Mary did not know where she or her sister would go. They are their only family around and friends did not have space. Now that Mary’s sister is on disability and Mary’s back to working part-time, they could pay the rent but not catch up on the months they fell behind. A rental assistance agency had committed funds to Mary’s housing back in May 2023 but by October 2023 they had not been received. With our help, Mary connected with a different rental assistance agency, the landlord promptly sent the required information, Mary’s back rent was paid and her eviction case dismissed.
During negotiations, a landlord lawyer or agent will typically tell unrepresented tenants, based on the negotiating authority their landlord clients, who are not present, allow, that unless they can pay everything owed in a short amount of time, their choices are to move out or be evicted. For most tenants, paying in full in short order is not possible. Yet, for most tenants, avoiding an eviction and staying housed might both be possible thanks in large part to recent legislation.
Oregon’s HB 2001 (2023)[6] did a lot for low-income tenants evicted for nonpayment, allowing them up until the time of trial to pay the rent due listed on their eviction notice to require the case be dismissed. Multnomah County’s primary rental assistance agency, Bienestar, is also onsite in the Crane Room, accepting referrals and answering questions about individual cases for tenants and their lawyers.
With a modicum of legal advice, options widen for parents trying to keep their kids housed after an illness, injury, or job loss puts them behind on rent. They can set a trial date, which gives them at least two weeks to work with rental assistance and to earn, raise, and otherwise find the back rent they owe. A tenant might need help negotiating a move out, repairs, a behavioral agreement, or other terms with the landlord.
Most importantly, those who receive legal advice know how to avoid having an eviction on their record, a shared goal among TED’s clients. Disruptive displacement—having to move under unfavorable terms—leads to homelessness,[7] negative health outcomes,[8] interference in children’s education,[9] instability in communities,[10] negative impacts on credit scores, and makes it harder to rent again.[11]
Tenant eviction defense prevents disruptive displacement. In a randomized trial in New York City, “Tenants who were represented by attorneys were more than four times more likely to retain possession of their apartments than similar tenants who were not represented.”[12] Representation has drastically reduced disruptive displacement in San Francisco, Seattle, Philadelphia and many other cities.[13] Washington State passed a right to counsel program for tenants in 2021[14] and already 50% of tenants served through the program, whose outcomes are known, remain housed.[15]
Preventing evictions presents huge cost savings for shelters and other social support systems. A cost benefit analysis commissioned by New York City predicted that a program to represent tenants could recoup $3 to $6 for every dollar spent.[16] In fact, it is cheaper, period, to keep people housed than allow them to become homeless.[17]
Eviction also discriminates. In many cities across the U.S., Black tenants, particularly women as heads of Black households, are 2X as likely, or more, to be evicted.[18] In California, Latinx tenants saw similarly disproportionate eviction rates.[19] Recent scholarship argues that summary eviction proceedings are racialized and “one of the most violent acts resulting from a judgment of our civil courts.”[20]
Over six months of 2023, The Commons Law Center’s in-court Tenant Eviction Defense program served 516 tenants over 78 clinics. On clinic days, TED’s attorneys gave brief legal advice and helped negotiate nearly 20% of the matters on the docket. Of the tenants we served, 84% avoided having an eviction on their record, including 56% who kept their housing and 28% who agreed to move out.
Typically, with a team of just 1 lawyer and 1 paralegal or clerk, TED has been able to obtain majority favorable outcomes for about a fifth of Multnomah tenants on the eviction docket. The downstream effects of this simple intervention cannot be overstated.
No tenant should be disruptively displaced because they are unaware of their rights and opportunities, struggling to navigate the legal system under stress, or unable to negotiate on a level playing field with landlord lawyers. Policymakers have an opportunity to positively impact multiple overloaded systems by investing in legal advice for tenants facing eviction.
The National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel maintains a list of jurisdictions that have adopted some kind of right to legal counsel for tenants facing eviction.[21] In Oregon, local and state governments are responding. Oregon Housing and Community Services commissioned a report from the Oregon State Bar to explore the landscape of tenant representation, and is working with Oregon State Bar’s Modest Means Program and others to fund legal services for tenants facing eviction. Multnomah County and the City of Portland Housing Bureau have made significant investments.
As a result, Oregon Law Center’s Eviction Defense Project has doubled the number of lawyers practicing tenant law since 2020; Portland Community College’s CLEAR Clinic and Multnomah Public Defender’s Community Law Project have effective, ongoing and growing programs to serve tenants; and Portland State University’s Evicted in Oregon serves as a data clearinghouse. The Commons Law Center is proud to be among this group of committed justice advocates and looks forward to expanding our work to help more families stay housed.
By: Auden Friedman & Amanda Caffall
[1] Evicted in Oregon, By County: Latest Eviction Data. Updated on: November 15, 2023, https://www.evictedinoregon.com/by-county-latest-eviction-data (last visited on December 4, 2023).
[2] Evicted in Oregon, By County: Latest Eviction Data. Updated on: November 15, 2023, https://www.evictedinoregon.com/by-county-latest-eviction-data (last visited on December 4, 2023).
[3] Sharon Meieran, 50 is the New 70: The rising epidemic of aging and homelessness 5 (2021).
[4] Andrew Scherer, The Case Against Summary Eviction Proceedings: Process as Racism and Oppression, 53 Seton Hall Law Review 18 (2022).
[5] By County: Latest Eviction Data. Updated on: November 15, 2023, https://www.evictedinoregon.com/by-county-latest-eviction-data (last visited on December 4, 2023).
[6] H.B. 2001. § 2021.
[7] Stout Risius Ross, LLC, The Estimated Cost of an Eviction Right to Counsel Outside of New York City 30 (2022).
[8] Ibid., 43.
[9] Ibid., 50.
[10]Ibid., 54.
[11]Ibid., 40.
[12] Stout Risius Ross, LLC, The Estimated Economic Impact of an Eviction Right to Counsel in Detroit 98 (2022).
[13] Ibid., 97-101.
[14] RCW 59.18.640
[15] Jim Bamberger et al., Report to the Legislature on Implementation of the Appointed Counsel Program for Indigent Tenants in Unlawful Detainer Cases 8 (2022)
[16] Stout Risius Ross, LLC, The Estimated Economic Impact of an Eviction Right to Counsel in Detroit 11,12 (2022).
[17] Ly A, Latimer E, Housing First Impact on Costs and Associated Cost Offsets: A Review of the Literature. 60 Can J Psychiatry 475-87 (Nov. 2015).
[18]Stout Risius Ross, LLC, The Estimated Cost of an Eviction Right to Counsel Outside of New York City 27 (2022).
[19] Stout Risius Ross, LLC, The Estimated Economic Impact of an Eviction Right to Counsel in Detroit 66 (2022).
[20] Andrew Scherer, The Case Against Summary Eviction Proceedings: Process as Racism and Oppression, 53 Seton Hall Law Review 2 (2022).
[21] National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel, Current Tally of Tenant Right to Counsel Jurisdictions (2022) http://civilrighttocounsel.org/highlighted_work/organizing_around_right_to_counsel (last visited December 4, 2023)