Renters in Multnomah County, Oregon who show up to eviction court alone are about to have more help waiting for them. The county is seeking providers to staff legal advocates directly inside the courthouse during eviction proceedings, a strategy aimed at catching tenants at the moment of crisis rather than hoping they find a lawyer beforehand.
The approach addresses a stubborn imbalance in eviction courts: landlords have legal representation in roughly 80 to 90 percent of cases, while tenants have lawyers fewer than 10 percent of the time. That gap produces predictable results. Unrepresented tenants are far more likely to receive default judgments or agree to settlements that leave them with eviction records and little time to find housing. By the time many tenants learn legal help exists, their court date has already passed.
In-court programs in Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Washington D.C. have shown that stationing advocates inside the courthouse reduces default judgments and helps tenants negotiate better outcomes, including more time to move and sealed records. New York City's right-to-counsel program, launched in 2017, saw evictions drop 30 to 40 percent in neighborhoods where the program operated.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey.
The timing reflects a shift in how Multnomah County is approaching housing stability. During the pandemic, the county distributed emergency rental assistance to help tenants pay arrears and avoid the courthouse entirely. Those federal funds, mostly drawn from pandemic-era relief programs, largely dried up by 2023 and 2024. The county is now investing in intervention at the point of crisis rather than upstream financial assistance.
The stakes are significant for a county where roughly 46 percent of households rent and homelessness is already among the most visible in the country. Preventing an eviction costs a fraction of what the county spends once someone loses housing: estimates for homelessness services run $30,000 to $50,000 or more per person annually, compared to a few thousand dollars for eviction prevention. Multnomah County's budget is under pressure from declining commercial property tax revenue and rising costs for behavioral health services, making cost-effective housing interventions a priority.
Eviction filings in the county climbed back toward pre-pandemic levels by 2023 and 2024 after state and federal moratoriums expired, a pattern seen nationally. Oregon's eviction process is notably fast, with landlords able to move cases through court quickly, which compounds the difficulty for tenants trying to find help in time.
This expansion builds on existing county investment in [courtroom-based legal support](articles/multnomah-county-putting-legal-support-staff-inside-eviction-courts) that has been growing in recent years. The county's Department of County Human Services is seeking multiple providers for the program, posted June 2, with services targeted for the coming fiscal year. The total funding amount has not been disclosed publicly.
