Distribution of federal rental assistance was a key topic in the Oregon Legislature’s special session on Monday, December 13. In the end, legislators voted to commit another $100 million in additional rental assistance and another $100 million to assist renters facing eviction. Legislators were critical of the Oregon Housing and Community Services Department and its director for what they saw as failure to distribute resources timely, even though Oregon currently ranks fourth among the 50 states in the pace of rental assistance distribution.
As the legislature debated the need for more rental assistance, NeighborImpact in Central Oregon quietly spent out the last of its federal rental assistance that same night.
“We have put $10.6 million out the door since June,” noted NeighborImpact Executive Director Scott Cooper. “We have served 1,791 households with an average payment of just under $6,000. The team was supposed to have until June 30 to spend out, but we had always planned to spend out by Christmas, and we are comfortably ahead of our self-imposed deadline.”
NeighborImpact has contracted with Oregon Housing and Community Services to distribute multiple rounds of rental assistance in Crook, Deschutes and Jefferson Counties and at the Warm Springs reservation. The organization has distributed nearly $18.6 million in funding.
Cooper noted that the latest round of funding generated nearly $29 million in requests from 3,532 households. “The unpaid applications will now be transferred to Oregon Housing and Community Services for processing by a third-party contractor using a call center in Washington,” Cooper noted. “Our office will be available to help people navigate the system, but we will not be involved in processing or paying the next round of applications, due to Oregon Housing’s decision to centralize the program. We’re kind of disappointed about that.”
During the special legislative session, Oregon Housing said it would be re-opening the now-closed portal for additional rent applications. Tenants who apply for rent assistance are barred from being evicted for 60 days from the time they file their application. It is unclear how rent from new applications will be paid, since the existing waiting list is larger than the remaining amount of funds.
Cooper said NeighborImpact is working on bringing additional funding to the region to continue to support rental assistance. “Unfortunately, government doesn’t move as fast as the economy,” Cooper said. “We do believe there is a pathway to bring a couple million more dollars into the region to help stabilize the rental economy, but that may take a couple more months.”
In the meantime, tenants and landlords interested in rental assistance should visit the Oregon Housing and Community Services website at oregonrentalassistance.org.
Cooper said the opportunity to help Central Oregonians with rent assistance during COVID has been a gift to NeighborImpact. “We have never had these kinds of resources,” he said. “It has been a struggle to stand up a program this large this fast, but it has been an honor to be able to say, ‘Yes we can’ when asked if we can help.”
Cooper also commented that the landlord community of Central Oregon is an unsung hero of the rental crisis during the pandemic. “Landlords have worked with tenants to keep them in their rentals while they worked out arrangements to pay their back due rent. Courts have not experienced a surge in eviction filings in Central Oregon. The landlords have done their part in uploading documents to help qualify their clients for assistance. That hasn’t been everyone’s experience statewide, but it says a lot about Central Oregon’s culture of care,” Cooper said. “This whole experience has been different in our region than it has in the rest of Oregon. As often is the case, things are different here — and usually in a better way.”
