Is your landlord harassing you? 

 

Unfortunately Multnomah county has very little legal protections for tenants against the abuse and harassment from landlords and property managers.

Landlords and property managers may use harassment techniques such as intimidation, threat, violence, and abuse to influence and manipulate tenants.

  • When they don’t have legal standing. 

  • When they don’t have the resources to use legal action against tenants. 

  • Simply because they feel entitled enough to harass and oppress working class people who rent from them their homes. 

When dealing with an invasive or abusive landlord it is important to remember the following: 

  • They have no authority, on their own, to remove anyone from anywhere.

  • Just because your landlord said you’ll be evicted or that you have to move, that does NOT mean it is true. Most of the time they are just banking on the possibility that they will intimidate a tenant into leaving so that they don't have to pay money to take the tenant to court.

  • If there are eviction moratoriums in effect this will greatly limit the reasons for which a landlord can evict you and you need to review your rights under the moratorium that is in effect (link to moratorium)



If you are experiencing harassment from your landlord, it is likely that they are trying to:

  • influence you to self-evict yourself

  • trying to find a way to evict you for “just cause” by agitating you into threatening them or doing something destructive to the housing

  • Manufacture some sort of reason to send you an eviction notice


If you are experiencing harassment from your landlord during a COVID 19 “Eviction moratorium” it is most likely that the landlord is trying to: 


  • Prod you to see if you have left yourself open to “upkeep” or “damage to unit” accusations

  • Investigate whether or not you may have new roommates previously not on the lease (and if so they will try and evict you for this)

  • influence you to self-evict yourself

  • trying to find a way to evict you for “just cause” by agitating you into threatening them or doing something destructive to the housing

  • Manufacture some sort of reason to send you an eviction notice


If your landlord has threatened to evict you CLICK HERE (goest to eviction threat page)


There are steps you can take to protect yourself from landlord Harassment:

  • Documenting Both the landlord and yourself for protection

    • You do not have to provide proof of income loss to your landlord.

    • Save all documentation of income loss however, so you can qualify for any possible state or federal rent assistance programs.

    • Document all the repair/habitability issues that you have that the landlord has failed to address

    • Document your history of rent payments with bank statements 



How can we organize our community to fight back against landlord harassment:

Enact a citywide Tenant Protection Ordinances 

(link to examples, maybe PTU’s). 

LATU

HHH

NEWR BOULDER - cant stress enough how well this group has already done so much we wish to do as well

Other cities?