Governor Kate Brown on Wednesday signed into law Senate Bill 282, extending the repayment period for residential rent accrued during the Covid-19 pandemic until February 2022.
The new law will allow renters until then to repay rent accrued between April 2020 and June 2021. Oregon’s residential eviction moratorium remains in effect through June 30.
“Everyone deserves a warm, safe, dry place to call home — and during the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been particularly critical that Oregonians be able to stay in their homes,” Brown said in a statement.
Brown thanked Portland Senator Kayse Jama and Eugene Representative Julie Fahey — both Democrats — for their work in passing this bill and ensuring protections for low-income Oregonians hardest hit by the housing and rent impacts of the pandemic.
Renters from the Black, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and communities of color were disproportionately impacted, the governor said.
The bill “gives the Oregonians hardest hit by economic impacts during the pandemic more time to recover and, thanks to a historic amount of rent assistance in Oregon, we have the resources to help those families get back on stable financial footing,” she said.
Qualified Oregonians can apply for rental assistance through the Oregon Emergency Rental Assistance Program to help pay past due and current rent.
Oregonians may qualify to receive assistance for current, future, and past due rent after Oregon’s eviction moratorium expires on July 1.
Cover photo by Ashley Brown, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
