The past year has been filled with lots of changes for Don’t Evict PDX and we’ve recently done some collective reflection on what we want this volunteer tenant collective to look like going forward and where we want to put our energy. Here is a statement about our current plans, we will share more soon! Don’t Evict PDX is moving away from individual tenant support and transitioning to focus on the work of building tenant power through mass organization and resource sharing. This means that we will no longer be able to respond to tenant emergencies, including individual eviction cases. When Don ..read more

Content Warning : Transphobia, Organizational Harm, Racism SUMMARY As part of the Portland housing and tenant rights community, we feel it’s important to openly discuss issues that impact our work as organizers and community members who value abolition and decolonization. The purpose of this statement is to address ongoing issues with Portland Tenants United. DEPdx was established in July 2020, and as a relatively new organization in the tenant’s rights space of Portland, many of our early members were not aware of the legacy of harm that Portland Tenants United (PTU) and founding member, Mar ..read more

We were featured in the latest issue of Rose City Radical - a bimonthly, locally-based, cooperatively operated newspaper by and for working class Portlanders. We published a letter that we send to tenants to highlight the court observation and direct outreach work we do to share resources and support tenants facing eviction. You can find it on page 25. Read the issue here ..read more

Over the past year, DEPDX had been working with other Portland-based community groups to create a ‘right to council’ initiative for Multnomah County that we hope to pass as a ballot measure in 2022. The measure would guarantee free legal representation for all tenants in eviction court. If passed, Eviction Representation for All (ERA) would help to shift the power balance in court that overwhelmingly favors landlords, reduce the number of evictions that occur, and lessen the harm caused by evictions. The coalition of groups working on the initiative include - Portland DSA / Stop The Sweeps PDX ..read more

Who is filing evictions (FEDs) in Multnomah county? Who is representing evictors in court? Who are the worst repeat offenders? These are all questions we had and info we wish was consolidated, so we are starting a weekly #EvictorReportPDX. We had originally started this as a daily project, but it turns out that many FED filings don't show up for days after they have been filed - so we will have to update our reports to be weekly if we want them to fully reflect all the filings. We will delete the incomplete daily reports and then repost weekly reports. What’s included: Name of the property ..read more

For immediate release  dontevictpdx@gmail.com 503-482-4170 On Tuesday, June 15th tenants will gather at the county court in downtown Portland to impede business as usual at the Landlord/Tenant court. What Is the Evictor Class? With a little over two weeks until tenants’ meager pandemic protections disappear, Mayor Wheeler, the county commissioners, Governor  Brown, and the state legislature appear eager to forgo their duty to protect us from landlords, lawyers, judges and the sheriff’s department who are preparing to file and enforce thousands of new evictions on July 1st. We call t ..read more

Poster for Anti-Eviction Picket, June 15, 2021. Details in text below. Read the Press Release. Event Description: Tenants will gather on the steps of the Multnomah County Courthouse to picket the ongoing evictions and violence we face. Since the beginning of the moratorium, over 2000 eviction cases have been filed at this courthouse alone, and tenants are being forced out of their homes daily. What will happen in July when the meager protections our governments have provide evaporate? What will happen when rent is due but rental assistance hasn’t reached the tenants yet? There is still ..read more

Topic: Right to Counsel (RTC) Readings: Overview of RTC Progress RTC Map WA State’s RTC Bill Seattle’s RTC Bill Nebraska’s RTC Bill How to Fund RTC Context: When evictions go to court, tenants do not have the right to a public attorney because they are classified as civil cases, not criminal cases. Nationwide, roughly 90% of landlords trying to evict their tenants are represented by legal counsel in the courtroom, while fewer than 10% of these tenants have a lawyer. Right to counsel legislation, which has been passed in seven U.S. cities in the past few years, mandates that the government prov ..read more

On January 14th Multnomah County Commissioners rescinded the county-wide Eviction Moratorium (SO 1287).  SO 1287 was specifically created because the statewide moratorium of 2020 (HB 4213) did not provide enough protections for Portland’s high density of low income renters. The commissioners received 100% negative public testimony against rescinding the moratorium. So if not the public, whose testimony did the Mult Co commissioners actually listen to? They were won over by the words of Attorney Jenny Madkour who just happens to also be a landlord herself. Jenny’s concern was that “two mo ..read more

On Jan 13, 2021, activists with Don’t Evict PDX disrupted the Landlord/Tenant court proceedings in Multnomah County. After months of court observation, in which we have seen how the system is designed to fail tenants at every opportunity, we were moved to direct action and took aim at the people and the systems which process and enforce evictions. Our goals included “throwing sand into the gears of the system” on that day, testing the limits of the court’s commitment to its role in the violent removal of people from their homes, and putting those who benefit from this oppressive system on ..read more