PORTLAND, Ore — Tenants who are behind in their rent payments have one more day to pay what they owe.
On Tuesday, March 1, landlords can start taking steps to collect owed rent. Oregon's eviction moratorium expired over the summer, but tenants were given an extension until Feb. 28 to pay back any rent they owe from April 1, 2020 -June 30, 2021.
The extension was to give the state more time to chip away at a massive backlog of applications for rental assistance. Now that the deadline is here, some tenants are worried.
Kim McCarty, executive director of the Community Alliance of Tenants said many are panicking.
"Tenants are calling us saying, 'I owe tremendous amounts of money related to the pandemic, I put in an application I'm still waiting,'" McCarty said.
The state's emergency response program has paid more than $289 million in Federal Emergency Rental Assistance to more than 40,000 households. There are more than 18,000 applications remaining to be processed.
Ron Garcia with the Rental Housing Alliance of Oregon said while landlords could start an eviction process, if tenants are still waiting for rental assistance applications to be processed or their payments to go through, they can't be evicted until this June under Oregon's Safe Harbor bill passed late last year.
"So, there's an additional layer of frustration, like yeah, now the money is owed to me as a landlord, but I'm still going to have a hard time collecting it," Garcia said. As the deadline draws nearer McCarty encourages tenants who need aid to apply for rental assistance.