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On Thursday, Oregon Secretary of State Shemia Fagan included the state’s COVID-19 rental assistance program in a list of planned audits.
Oregon Housing and Community Services, a state agency, has run the Oregon Emergency Rental Assistance Program since May 2021, when the feds gave Oregon $280 million to disburse to tenants unable to pay rent. For nearly a year, the agency has struggled to keep up with the pace of applications for federal aid.
WW and other news outlets have closely chronicled a glitchy software system that at one point left nearly 13,000 Oregon households in jeopardy of eviction because the program could not deliver rent checks swiftly enough to landlords. The planned audit was first reported by the Portland Business Journal.
The agency has vehemently defended its performance. OHCS director Margaret Salazar, who will soon depart to work in the Biden administration, has repeatedly boasted that Oregon is doling out rent relief dollars more quickly than other states.
But for tenants in Oregon who didn’t receive promised checks within 60 or 90 days of applying for rental assistance, leaving them outside of the state’s safe harbor from eviction, Oregon’s comparative ranking to other states meant little. They just wanted assurance they wouldn’t get evicted.
On Dec. 14 of last year, the Oregon Legislature passed a bill that extended safe harbor for all applicants until Sept. 30, 2022—so long as they could provide documentation to their landlord that they had applied for assistance.
State Rep. Julie Fahey (D-West Eugene) and Sen. Kayse Jama (D-East Portland), who chair the House and Senate Housing committees, first requested an audit of the program a day before the bill became law, in a letter to Secretary of State Shemia Fagan on Dec. 13.
“We remain deeply troubled by the inconsistent results across counties, by technical difficulties with the Allita software, by what appears to be a lack of clear communication to renters and landlords, and above all, by the fact that more than 8,000 Oregonians are facing eviction at the time of our December special session because their application process has exceeded the statutory safe harbor period,” the two chairs wrote.
Now, Fagan has answered. “The state is facing criticism for stopping the application process for these funds even though it has been reported Oregon was one of the timeliest states issuing rental assistance,” a description of the audit from Fagan’s office reads. “Issues cited by legislators and other stakeholders include technical challenges with rental assistance software and public communication challenges.”
OHCS used a software called Alitta 360 to process applications, a computer program immediately plagued with glitches and delays.
The agency initially recruited local community action organizations to process applications and send out checks, leaving local nonprofits unable to keep up with the historic number of applicants. So last year OHCS brought on a third-party contractor to help process rental applications, but still many renters found themselves outside the eviction safe harbor. In October, the agency announced all of the second-round funds would be handled by the contractor. OHCS has so far paid out nearly $280 million in funds.
This article was published with support from the Jackson Foundation, whose mission is: “To promote the welfare of the public of the City of Portland or the State of Oregon, or both.”