Common rental barriers are keeping a Salem family homeless – Salem Reporter:
Mr. Moo Moo is in storage.
Ally, who is 8 and has been living in motels since October, would like to hold him again.
Her mom, Misty Blades, said the purple stuffed cow was lost after they were given an eviction notice. They had 10 days to pack everything and leave their northwest Salem rental home. Mr. Moo Moo was put in a hastily-packed box, but Blades doesn’t know which one. She’d go get him, if she knew.
A 10-day notice is almost always for non-payment of rent. (There are other types of 10-day eviction notices—for repeat violation of lease terms, for example—but they don’t allow a forcible eviction after 10-days. This is very likely to be for non-payment of rent which prompts the question: How did you not see this coming? Poor Mr. Moo Moo.)
In February, four months after becoming homeless, Blades recounted her experience working each day, trying and failing to find a new place to live for herself, her daughter, her live-in caregiver and her dog, Angel.
If money is tight, one questions dog ownership and, depending on what’s going on, the cost of a live-in caregiver.
Theirs is one of around 140 households in Salem and Keizer who have a coveted Section 8 voucher in hand, but nowhere to spend it.
Oregon law makes in illegal to discriminate against source of income. It was designed specifically to allow Section 8 tenants a wider opportunity to rent. This was necessary because Section 8 tenants were, at least in my three years of apartment management, the worst of all tenants. (Not universally, of course, but as a general cohort, absolutely.)
The voucher, a federal rental subsidy, is the most common way that low-income people can get help affording a place to rent. It gives them a set amount of money each month to put toward rent anywhere in the private market. Landlords are paid directly by the Salem Housing Authority, and families pay whatever balance remains.
This is not nearly the happy drum circle the article makes everything out to be. Section 8 comes with an entire regulatory framework atop standard landlord-tenant law. There are special inspections, rent control, lease restrictions, and extra paperwork.
This is why before the law changed many landlords simply excluded Section 8 tenants as a class. Rental ads literally read “No Section 8.” That is now illegal.
…around 140 households in Salem and Keizer who have a coveted Section 8 voucher in hand, but nowhere to spend it.
Salem does not have enough housing. That’s been true for awhile and is one component of the homeless crisis.
…Prospective renters often face barriers: a rental history landlords frown upon, a poor credit score and an inability to pay the full up-front security deposit.
“A rental history landlords frown upon” is one of the best sentences in the article. But, yes, rental history, credit score, and income are all the typical things that landlords and management companies look at when judging the worthiness of a potential tenant. They have to trust that whoever they rent to won’t trash the place or skip out on rent.
The housing authority’s landlord navigator, Nikki Burdette, works full time to help families find a landlord that will take them, even with blemishes on their rental history. Many are automatically screened out by landlords’ requirements, which typically include no recent evictions or criminal history.
“Blemishes on their rental history” is another great term.
“A lot of these people are being judged for things in the past and aren’t given an opportunity to build their future, and that’s what’s frustrating. There’s just no real in-between,” Burdette said.
If I have a house for rent worth, say, $400,000, what’s my desire to turn that property over to someone with a criminal background, poor rental history, or inability to pay? Of course, people are being judged for things in their past. We all are. That’s not the problem. The problem is that their past behavior sucks.
Burdette said she’s seen the effort Blades puts toward finding somewhere to rent.
“It definitely wasn’t a lack of her trying by any means,” Burdette said. “It’s just unfortunately barriers that are preventing her from getting approved.”
She’s probably cut the number of possible apartments in half just be having a dog. Many won’t take pets.
Now 43, Blades was homeless in Fresno, California, during her early 30s. She’d lost custody of her older children, and said she drank to stop feeling that loss.
This does not help her case. Nobody reads this and thinks, “Now there’s a responsible renter.”
(Also, if this is your history, why would you chose to have another kid?)
She went hungry, and recalled setbacks including moving from campsite to campsite after police officers would tell her to pick up what she could carry then and there. They’d throw out the rest, an ongoing practice in the Fresno area.
As a side note, Fresno’s homeless population is significantly lower than Portland’s despite being just about the same population size. (Portland is about 1.1x larger.)
She said he spent three years on waitlists, including for Church at the Park’s microshelters, before landing a housing option in Woodburn instead. As of this month, there were 2,766 people on Church at the Park’s waitlist for its adult microshelter site in Salem.
Church at the Park is a comparatively successful non-governmental organization, which means (of course) that the State of Oregon is cutting their funding.
Blades’ life experience and the people she’s met have taught her that anyone can become homeless after a single disruption.
That is untrue and the wrong lesson to learn.
“All it takes for anyone to be homeless is one wrong decision. One wrong decision that turns into two,” she said. “All it takes is one major thing to go wrong with somebody who has a limited income, and then that sets them off completely. And there’s no resources out there to help them.”
Blades’ story is a cascade of errors not “one wrong decision.” (She even hints at this when she says one that turns into two.) There are a lot of resources out there to help, though arguably not enough and/or inadequate, but ultimately, no amount of resources will be sufficient for people who continually make terrible decisions. There are limits to society’s responsibility.
For Blades, that came in October, after failing a rental inspection which she was unprepared for during an overwhelming time in her life. Her car had been broken into, her purse was stolen and her previous live-in caregiver moved out.
“Failing a rental inspection” another fun turn-of-phrase. A failed inspection indicates a violation of habitability standards. ORS 90.320 covers the landlord’s duty to maintain habitability; ORS 90.325 speaks to the tenant’s duty to maintain the unit. Guess which was the problem if she was given a 10-day eviction notice?
And what might those things include?
Under ORS 90.325, tenants must:
- Keep the premises reasonably clean and sanitary
- Dispose of garbage properly
- Use plumbing and appliances properly
- Not deliberately or negligently damage the property
- Not disturb neighbors
So a tenant could “fail” an inspection if they:
- Cause infestations through poor sanitation
- Block egress exits with hoarding
- Damage smoke detectors
- Create fire hazards
- Cause plumbing backups through misuse
- Allow trash accumulation violating health code
To be clear, this is not about décor or minor clutter. It also implies that the eviction wasn’t for non-payment of rent (though it could be that too). It implies that Blades is a seriously terrible renter.
She said she was given a 10-day notice to leave. She had nowhere to go.
That being her own fault.
Since losing their home, they’ve been moving from hotel to hotel while looking for a new place to live.
Why? What’s the possible rationale for moving from hotel to hotel? Is she not paying the hotels as well? Is she importing her own brand rental chaos to each establishment then skipping out? What possible reason could there be for moving hotels six times(!) as the story tells us later?
Ally, Blades’ daughter, stayed mostly quiet, playing Roblox on her tablet, sitting on the motel bed as her mom described countless phone calls with service providers and landlords, and the let-downs, to Salem Reporter.
How can they afford a tablet? And Ally definitely should not be allowed to play Roblox. It has no decent child-age restrictions or restraints.
Blades estimated that she spends over 60 hours a week making phone calls to find housing, maintaining appointments and applying to apartments.
That’s 8½ hours a day, including weekends. I’m sorry, but I don’t believe that for a second. For one thing, there’s just not that many places to call in the Salem area.
She’s been providing landlords with a cover letter, guided by a Rent Well program she took at the suggestion of Burdette, the housing authority navigator.
Rent Well is a program that tries to rehabilitate renters through a series of classes and offers landlords willing to take on graduates a $5,000 guarantee to cover any damages, unpaid rent, or legal fees from graduates. Unsurprisingly, many landlords find this inadequate.
Blades’ resume shares the circumstances of her move-out notice, background on her health needs and references including her caregiver’s employer, Blades’ therapist, her daughter’s therapist, a family coach from the Oregon Department of Human Services and a former housing manager. It also includes a request for reasonable accommodations due to her disabilities under fair housing laws, and information about the benefits of the Rent Well course.
Despite having a child in need of a stable home, and despite having a voucher guaranteeing she can pay a sizable portion of rent, Blades hasn’t been able to secure a place that will accept her with her low credit score and limited income.
Landlords can deal with all kinds of issues in potential renters, but low credit scores and limited income will do a person in. If you’ve not proven credit worthy with others, that’s an enormous red flag. If you don’t have the income to pay for the place you’re trying to rent, that’d be another.
“I want something cooked,” Blades said. “I want to be able to sit at home and be comfortable, and not be in my bed while I eat my dinner.”
She is so far away from any discussion about what she wants, it’s incredible.
Blades misses privacy. She misses silverware, and dishes. They have a waffle maker in the bathroom, balancing on the sink. She misses having a few extra dollars to take her daughter out to have fun. Ally’s birthday was in November, and she still hasn’t gotten a party.
I don’t have any idea what she means about “having a few extra dollars.” She’s hasn’t had “extra dollars” in decades, and based on current belief and behavior, she’s won’t have them any time soon, either.
This story, as is common in the media, promotes a thoroughly incorrect expectation of where the line between personal and societal responsibility lies. This reads as a litany of terrible decisions, a life built with no capacity to handle the challenges which inevitably arise, and an ongoing promotion of victimhood as worthy of compassion.