Some Salem renters got a notice on their door starting early summer, advising them the eviction moratorium had come to an end on June 30, 2021. (Saphara Harrell/Salem Reporter)
Thousands of Marion County residents who applied unsuccessfully for rental assistance through a state program may face eviction before more money is issued, unless they also apply through the county.
Oregon has two sets of federal funding to aid renters who lost income during the Covid pandemic. One was run through the state, which provided $15 million to the Mid-Willamette Community Action Agency to distribute in Marion and Polk counties.
Since then, the agency has approved 98% of that money for payments to households and spent 88% of it as of Oct. 15, with the last checks expected to go out Nov. 11, said executive director Jimmy Jones.
But around 3,400 Marion County households that submitted applications may not get any aid until the state issues another round of funding.
A separate set of federal funding went to local governments including Marion County, which got $20.8 million. County spokesperson Chad Ball said 189 households have gotten or are awaiting payment, and the county is waiting for another 283 applicants to provide more information. He said the county has enough funding to cover the 3,400 Marion County households that applied through the state and didn’t get aid, and encouraged them to apply through the county.
As of Sept. 30, Marion County had spent just $100,000 of its rental assistance – by far the least of all the local jurisdictions that got federal funding, according to federal Treasury Department data.
The last of a series of statewide moratoriums banning evictions during the pandemic ended on June 30. The state legislature passed SB 278, effective June 25, which gave renters a “safe harbor” period where landlords couldn’t evict if they hadn’t paid rent or take them to court for 60 days after they provide documentation showing they’d applied for rent assistance.
Delia Hernández, spokesperson for Oregon Housing and Community Services, said a second $156 million round of funding through the state will be “available soon.” The agency did not say when exactly it would issue the funding.
“We are actively working to determine a specific timeline and hope to make that available soon,” she said.
Whenever it does, the money will go through its private contractor Public Partnerships LLC, rather than through community action agencies. Jones said he understood the decision given that many agencies around the state tasked with distributing the first set of funding are well behind, but he was “not excited” about it.
“I worry that Marion and Polk counties will wind up being underserved by the algorithm that they use to prioritize who gets assistance first,” he said, adding that his agency was among the quickest in the state to give out the money. “It’s sort of painful to walk away from the (second set of funding) knowing that in a matter of weeks, we could get that spent too.”
The Mid-Willamette Community Action Agency went through its funding so quickly that it ended up pulling from federal funds intended to cover costs of providing the assistance, instead giving it directly to households.
After its funding runs out next week, the agency will take over the process for Yamhill County, which still has around $2.5 million from the program to spend on rental assistance and due to short staffing would likely not get through it until January. Jones said he believes the agency can do it in two to three weeks.
The federal Treasury Department previously set a Sept. 30 deadline for agencies to spend 65% of the funding and said it would start clawing back funding that wasn’t spent to give to areas that had gone through theirs and where “the need was demonstrably greater,” Jones said, but that never happened.
The Mid-Willamette Community Action Agency had spent around 70% by then, Jones said, but most others distributing it in Oregon missed the deadline, prompting the state on Monday to set a new deadline of Dec. 31 to spend it all.
He said the agency hiring 33 new people, renting a building for the program and creating a call center made it successful in getting rental assistance out to tenants facing eviction. “I think in other parts of the state, they didn’t believe they could hire that many people, or they thought they could run it through their own program. Those are the two biggest problems,” he said. “At first, there were a lot of barriers to getting the program up and running. And if you couldn’t throw 30 people at it, you really had no chance of staying ahead.”
The state rolled out its funding slower than with previous rental assistance programs due to problems with the application, Jones said. It was 27 pages long printed out and only accessible through an online portal, which created barriers to getting assistance. The state’s application software also scored applicants based on a points system that didn’t prioritize people facing imminent eviction.
He said most of those issues have been resolved over time by trial and error, but structural barriers remain for people who have learning disabilities, language barriers, people with older smartphones and those who live in areas without Wi-Fi access. The agency is also spending about 16% of the funding on Polk County despite its population making up 20% of its service area.
“Areas that I know that there’s a great deal of poverty in like Falls City have had very few, if any, applications approved and funded there,” he said. “So I think there are some inefficiencies in the system, and I think, rural Oregon in particular will probably be less well served by the centralization effort, even though it will certainly make things move faster as a whole.”
When Oregon Housing and Community Services issues more funding, Hernández said it will immediately start processing applications for renters facing imminent eviction, particularly those who have been waiting over 60 days after submitting their applications.
“We have received incredibly helpful constructive criticism from our partners who work directly with tenants on how we can improve the application,” she said. “We are committed to continuous improvement and are actively working to advocate for more federal resources and to increase efficiency across the program.”
She said Oregon Housing and Community Services has added new risk factors to its scoring system, which will mean bigger households, people months behind on rent months behind on rent and people impacted by last year’s wildfires get priority.
When the state starts distributing the second set of funding, those who applied for the first program and are still waiting will automatically transfer over.
Oregon Housing and Community Services encouraged anyone who has fallen behind on rent to apply online or call the non-emergency line 211. The state’s rental assistance program is accessible in English, Spanish, Russian, Vietnamese and Chinese. Renters who receive an eviction notice from their landlord should contact the Oregon Law Center’s Eviction Defense Project at 888-585-9638 or [email protected].
People can apply for rent assistance through Marion County online or by calling its customer service line toll free at 1-833-227-5161 for assistance. They can also contact United Way at 971-706-1364 or uwrentassist.unitedwaymwv.org
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Contact reporter Ardeshir Tabrizian: [email protected] or 503-929-3053.
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