Earlier this week, Oregon’s state housing agency acknowledged its Oregon Emergency Rental Assistance Program had sent out hundreds of misprinted checks bearing incorrect routing numbers.
But while that appears to have been a one-off mistake, property managers say there have also been issues with owners receiving the wrong checks for months that the state has been unable to fix, causing delays for landlords and tenants.
“The problems with this system were noted very early on,” said Anna Zamarripa, the accounts receivable administrator at Portland-based Capital Property Management, which manages about 150 properties in Oregon. “It was very clear this system was not working months ago, when we first started hearing about checks going to the wrong people. I can’t believe it has been allowed to go on this long.”
Delia Hernández, a spokesperson for Oregon Housing and Community Services, said Thursday that the agency is aware of the issue and has been working on a fix. She said it has been manually clearing inaccurate property owner information from its system and hopes to have a process in place by the end of the month that will allow landlords or management companies to verify the owner information.
Hernández said the agency estimates that between 50 to 75 checks issued by Public Partnerships LLC, a contractor Oregon hired in August to help it tackle its backlog of rent assistance applications, have been returned because they were made out to the wrong person.
“OHCS regrets the frustration this issue is causing landlords and appreciates their patience as these cases are resolved,” Hernández wrote in an email.
Zamarripa said the issue is a product of glitches in the Allita 360 software system, a vendor the state hired last spring to implement a centralized application system for the Oregon Emergency Rental Assistance Program.
She said the system doesn’t seem to recognize that property management companies represent multiple owners with different properties. Instead, it will automatically input the name of an owner associated with the property management company, even if that owner doesn’t own the building the tenant lives in. Zamarripa said property managers can’t change the name of the owner on the application once it has been entered, and she has been repeatedly told by processors working for the state that they can’t make the change either.
The problem has led to applications getting stuck in the processing phase with checks either needing to be reissued or property managers being unable to provide the verification needed to finish the application process, Zamarripa said. She said the issues have held up 19 applications submitted by tenants in buildings she manages so far. She is still waiting for the state to correct the issue in about half of those cases.
“They have to fix the software, they have to fix how they’re doing this,” Zamarripa said. “More time and people aren’t going to fix this problem.”
Even before Public Partnerships was hired to process rental applications, community agencies tasked with delivering rent assistance were saying that problems with the state’s software system were slowing the delivery of rent assistance and that glitches were leading to checks going out to the wrong property owners.
Last month, Gov. Kate Brown announced that she would call lawmakers into a special session Dec. 13 to extend eviction protections for those waiting on aid and provide $90 million in additional funding for emergency rent assistance. Oregon’s housing agency temporarily stopped accepting rent assistance applications for six weeks Dec. 1, saying it didn’t have enough federal funds left to support new applicants.
Oregon renters are currently protected from eviction for 60 days — or 90 days in Multnomah County — after they’ve informed their landlords that they’ve applied for rent assistance. But the state has struggled to process applications within the “safe harbor” period, leaving renters vulnerable to eviction. More than 8,000 applications are currently outside the safe harbor period, according to state data.
Lawmakers are expected to extend those protections next week to ensure that renters don’t face evictions while waiting for aid, a move supported by renter advocates.
However, Deborah Imse, executive director of Multifamily NW, a rental industry group whose members include a mix of large and small landlords and property managers, said extending eviction protections through a special session won’t fix the root problems hampering the program.
“A special session isn’t going to fix the administrative issues that are clearly plaguing this program,” she said in a statement. “Not only are there glaring problems with distribution of promised funds, but there’s a frustrating lack of clarity and communication from the agency about the process that is impacting both renters and housing providers.”
Robert Johnson, president and CEO of InterWest Properties Inc., which manages about 700 units in Oregon and southwest Washington, said he has received numerous checks made out to the wrong property owners. In one case, he said a check was made out to an owner in Yamhill County who died five years ago and whose property was placed into a trust, rather than the Portland landlord it was supposed to go to.
He said none of the checks made out to the wrong owner that he has sent back have yet been reissued.
Along with those issues, Johnson said he has received checks for incorrect amounts of rent assistance. In cases of overpayments, the state has directed him to keep that money and apply it to a tenant’s future rent, which he has, but he worries that those mistakes are depriving other tenants within the state of needed assistance.
“I really don’t think there’s been adequate accountability,” Johnson said.
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