Portland, Ore., is moving to give low-income renters facing eviction something their landlords almost always have: a lawyer.
The city is seeking a contractor to run an Eviction Legal Defense and Right to Counsel Pilot Program, a significant step in a policy debate that advocates have been pushing for years. The program targets a well-documented imbalance in housing courts: landlords have legal representation in roughly 80 to 90 percent of eviction cases, while most tenants appear alone, without any legal training or guidance.
When pandemic-era eviction protections and emergency rental assistance funds expired in 2022 and 2023, Multnomah County eviction filings surged past pre-pandemic levels and have continued climbing through 2024 and 2025, ranking among the highest per-capita rates in Oregon.
Portland's move follows a growing national shift. New York City became the first jurisdiction to guarantee legal counsel to low-income tenants in 2017. At least 17 cities and four states, including neighboring Washington in 2021, have since followed. Studies from the National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel have linked the absence of tenant representation to higher eviction rates and downstream homelessness.
Oregon has been active on tenant protections: it passed the nation's first statewide rent control law in 2019 and enacted emergency eviction slowdowns during the pandemic. But legal representation in the courtroom has remained out of reach for most renters, who face professional attorneys arguing on behalf of landlords.
The pilot comes as Portland's newly restructured city government, which debuted in January 2025 under Mayor Keith Wilson, is under pressure to show concrete results on housing without the years-long timelines that new construction requires. Right-to-counsel programs offer a relatively fast, evidence-backed intervention. The city has also been covered extensively for its broader push to provide free legal defense for tenants.
The contract amount, eligibility thresholds and geographic scope of the pilot have not been publicly disclosed. Those details will become clearer as the city selects a provider, with organizations like the Oregon Law Center and Legal Aid Services of Oregon considered likely candidates given their existing advocacy work on the issue.
