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’t Evict PDX began in 2020, there was almost no free legal support or representation for tenants facing eviction in Portland. Nobody else was keeping track of eviction numbers. Nobody else was watching the goings on in eviction court, while tenants were being evicted during a so-called “moratorium.” Since 2020, volunteers at Don’t Evict PDX set up projects during their own free time, including court watch, an eviction support inbox, eviction data analysis, mutual aid and tenant resources, to respond to the unmitigated state violence that tenants faced in eviction court.
Since Don’t Evict PDX began working to stop evictions, several well-funded nonprofits and academic institutions have taken up—and in some cases explicitly coopted--the work that started with the grassroots volunteers at Don’t Evict PDX. As a small organization run solely by volunteers, we do not have the same capacity to address eviction emergencies as the nonprofit organizations that came after us, such as the Eviction Defense Project and Commons Law Center.
And so we will no longer be able to respond to tenant emergencies and active eviction situations.
We are honored and humbled to have supported hundreds of tenants facing eviction to struggle against their landlords and the state, but that chapter has come to an end. As an organization, we are excited to transition our focus to building tenant power through mass organization. We have some great things in the works.
For now, anyone can still feel free to e-mail us, especially if you are organizing a tenant association! But we do not have capacity to respond to eviction emergencies or individual tenant issues currently.
In Solidarity, Don’t Evict PDX
