Organizers in Eugene and across the nation are calling for renters to withhold payments to landlords. The calls for a rent strike are in response to COVID-19 social distancing orders putting a historic number of Oregonians into unemployment. 

Rent strikes haven’t become common in Oregon yet, but their popularity is growing in the United States. One website, Rent Strike 2020, a website that calls for a complete freeze on rent, mortgage and utility payments for two months. The site’s petition had over 1,798,000 signatures as of April 24.

Over the past few weeks, Gov. Kate Brown has issued a series of executive orders in response to the COVID-19 pandemic:

• On March 17, Brownprohibited gatherings of more than 25 people and banned on site consumption at restaurants.

• On March 22, Brownordered a halt to residential evictions for not paying rent until June 20.

• The next day, Brownissued the “Stay Home, Save Lives” order, which closed or restricted many Oregon businesses, leading to layoffs and furloughs.

• On April 1, Brownclarified that the eviction moratorium did not excuse renters from paying “rent, utility charges, or any other service charges or fees, except for late charges.”

Since social distancing guidelines began the week of March 15, the Oregon Employment Department has received a record-breaking 333,700 initial unemployment insurance claims, according to an April 23 OEDpress release.

Social distancing orders had a similar effect across the nation. Nationally, more than 10 million people had filed for unemployment by April 1, the Daily Emerald previously reported. 

That spike in unemployment contributed to a decline in US renters paying rent on time. According to a report from the National Multifamily Housing Council, only 69% of households had made full or partial payments by April 5, a decrease of 12 percentage points from March. 

Among those who didn’t pay rent were at least 32 rent strikers in Chicago whose demands include canceling rent for the duration of the COVID-19 crisis, according to an article in The Chicago Maroon.

However, despite high levels of unemployment, most Oregonians paid their rent for April. According to reporting fromOregon Public Broadcasting, data show that non-payment rates rose by only 5-9% in Oregon, with total payment rates around 74-83%. According to local organizer Tim Schatz, who advocates for a rent strike, those high rates of payment represent a failure among organizers.

However, while many people worked for some part of March, April was different. That provides an opportunity to organizers, Schatz said in an interview.

The key to a successful rent strike in Schatz’s eyes is solidarity among large groups of renters. He advocates for renters to organize in their buildings and neighborhoods to form tenants’ unions. 

“It’s basic class struggle,” Schatz said in an interview. “There’s an opportunity to strike back in the middle of a crisis. Not only that people can’t pay rent, but that we could come together and be in a better position afterward.”

The organizing Schatz calls for is dispersed throughout Eugene, but one digital gathering place is a Facebookpage with nearly 8,000 followers focused on mutual aid, an organizational theory based on free exchange of community resources. There, among posts offering advice on where to get food for children or soliciting donations of masks for farmworkers, community members often advocate for a rent strike, though the posts sometimes devolve into name-calling and casting blame.

Besides calls to action, posts often include lists of resources renters can use to form tenants’ unions and how to negotiate with their landlords once they’ve done so. The strikes’ goals vary, but one common theme is that landlords should sit down with tenants to discuss how to go forward, rather than expect full, on-time payment regardless of circumstances.

Not all the posts about a rent strike are confrontational. Several call for including landlords in organizing efforts and advocating for greater mortgage relief.

Though many people are likely learning the phrase rent strike for the first time, they are not a new concept. From December 1907 through January 1908, 10,000 households in Manhattan, New York withheld their rent in a strike that introduced the idea of rent control to New York politics, according to anarticle from the Jewish Women’s Archive.

More recently, tenants in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles held a nearly year-long rent strike lasting from April 2017 through February 2018. The strikers were resisting rent hikes that would have increased rent by as much as 80% in some cases, according to areport by Curbed, an LA-based publication. At the resolution of the strike, rent went up by only 14% and tenants won the right to collectively bargain on future increases.

Information on renters rights during the COVID-19 epidemic is available on the Oregon Law Helpwebsite. 

Schatz’s apartment management company, Bright Apartments, did not respond to a request for comment.