Unpacking the Eviction Representation for All Campaign’s loss 🏡
Eviction Representation for All (ERA) was a grassroots, tenant-lead ballot initiative that aimed to bring legal representation to tenants in eviction court. It was a part the Civil Right to Council movement to expand a right to legal council beyond criminal courts and to civil courts like eviction court or family court.
The ERA campaign started out as a project of the Portland Democratic Socialists of America’s (Portland DSA) Housing Working Group in early 2021 with organizers from North Portland Tenants’ Collective (the tenant union I co-founded) and Don’t Evict PDX. The core coalition eventually grew to include Sisters of the Road and Stop the Sweeps with over 70 local housing, labor, faith, legal, and community-based organizations endorsing. The campaign raised $124,000 — primarily through small donations, but the campaigned received a few substantial donations from organizations.
I worked on this campaign from the very beginning. I remember the late night zoom calls, tears and consternation, the elation, heartbreak and relief. It was a tough loss; 80% voting no and only 20% voting yes.
Our goals for ERA weren’t to just pass the initiative, we also had an ideological agenda that included two departures from typical policy making in Oregon:
ERA opted for universality over means testing.
ERA used a re-distributive funding mechanism in the form of a novel tax on capital gains.
At many points throughout our policy development phase we were warned about these ambitious policy choices. But we included them because we felt a principled dedication to universal policy and to taxing the rich.
Means testing create an administrative burden that increases program costs without improving outcomes for the community served. It also creates a literal barrier to service that prevents people from accessing the help they need. We saw eviction as the qualifying condition and didn’t want to make renters have to reach out for resources.
A capital gains tax was important to us because they are taxed at a much lower rate than income taxes and retirement fund disbursements. Capital gains are also how the ultra-wealthy make their money. But by including these two components in the initiative, the campaign painted a giant target on its back.
So what was in this policy voters hated so much?
Eviction Representation for All or Measure 26-238 would have done three major things:
Establish the Tenant Resource Office in Multnomah County to contract with community based organizations to provide legal council, run the program and collect the tax
Adjust the eviction process to require landlords to file their eviction with the Tenant Resource Office which would kick off the outreach program and establish legal council; without legal council the eviction would not proceed
Add a tiny local capital gains tax in Multnomah County of 0.75% — less than a penny per $100.
Threatening to tax capital gains brings out the worst in people
Because taxes are already really confusing to most people, we opted to keep the language of the measure straightforward. But because of that, the opposition was able to sow a lot of confusion around who would be required to pay because we didn’t communicate exemptions clearly. This confusion also proved to be very persuasive to wonky liberals, economists and newspaper editorial boards.
The major industries that formed the opposition campaign were real estate industry folks (landlords and realtors) and corporate business types. The opposition PAC formed by the Portland Business Alliance aka the Portland Metro Chamber received $668,000 in donations, and out spent us 5:1.
Business interests are usually anti-tax and they came out against ERA because of our funding mechanism. We knew that the landlords would be against ERA. They benefit from the power imbalance in eviction court. Landlords already think Oregon’s summary proceedings for evictions are too slow. The realtors also came out against ERA because home sales are capital gains as they are an appreciating asset.
We knew that these are powerful groups and we would likely be outspent, but we hoped that our ground game would be strong enough to pull through.
Despite having overwhelming support from local housing, labor, faith, legal, and community-based organizations, two well-known and well-trusted BIPOC organizations joined up with the opposition campaign. Both of these organizations run small business incubator programs and one of them is a housing provider — choosing to align with capital instead of the communities that they serve.
Our reasons for loss include:
Low turn out election
Opposition funding and media campaign
Unclear tax impact
Sentiment shift towards reactionary politics and business opportunities
Conclusion
Everyone who volunteered for the campaign worked so hard. We probably clocked over 30,000 hours of unpaid labor over 2 years. It took me over a year to recover from the emotional and physical exhaustion I endured. And I don’t know if I will ever recover that sense of revolutionary optimism that brought me to work on ERA in the first place.
But I also owe a lot to the ERA campaign. It gave me a professional career and brought me to the Portland State University’s MURP program. I established very close friendships (maybe even trauma bonded) with many people. I also was able to develop important transferable skills like researching policy, leading teams, campaign strategy and grassroots fundraising.
And finally, the campaign honed my political and power analyses. Like labor organizing, I see tenant organizing as a means of building leverage against capital, but instead of the workplace it focuses on our reproductive labor. If you’re interested in reading more about my political analysis of renting and housing issues check out my newsletter: Housing Authority.
