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On Monday morning, dozens of housing advocates dressed in red T-shirts stood behind a wall of moving boxes outside the Multnomah County Courthouse. They came to oppose the Oregon Legislature’s proposal for drastic cuts to Gov. Tina Kotek’s Eviction Prevention Package in the state budget.
The demonstration’s title was a message for state lawmakers: “Stop Playing with House Money.”
Leor Beverly, senior program manager at Urban League of Portland, told those assembled that eviction prevention and homelessness prevention funds, which are distributed by Oregon Housing and Community Services, have helped more than 27,000 households stay off the streets over the past year.
The proposed budget would only cover a fraction of Portlanders in need, Beverly said, leaving 23,000 households at risk of homelessness. Most vulnerable are Black, Latinx, immigrant, low-income, and rural communities, according to Portland State University’s Evicted in Oregon research project.
If the OHCS budget passes as was written by the Legislature’s budget-writing committee, funds allocated to homelessness prevention and eviction prevention would drop from $130.2 million this biennium to $33.6 million in the next—a 74.2% decrease. In total, it allocates $21.2 million to eviction prevention and $12.4 million to homelessness prevention
Beverly characterized the proposed budget as another promise to marginalized groups that lawmakers have failed to make good on.
“It feels less like fiscal responsibility, and more like a racial retaliation at a time when the federal government has targeted our communities with disgusting zeal,” said Beverly.
The protest featured representatives from Community Alliance of Tenants, Oregon Housing Alliance, and the Urban League of Portland. Multnomah County Commissioner Shannon Singleton stepped up to the lectern and asked state lawmakers to follow in the footsteps of the county by protecting eviction support statewide. She said slashing eviction prevention in the state budget “will only create the need for more shelter, which is the least cost effective option we have.”
Speakers also stressed the outsized impact these cuts would have on senior citizens, who are the fastest-growing group of unhoused Americans, and children.
“Children who experience housing insecurity suffer academically, emotionally, and developmentally, carry that trauma into adulthood, and it shapes the future of our communities,” Beverly said.
The proposed budget, House Bill 5011, was reviewed at a work session by the Joint Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday and will now move to the House of Representatives for a vote.