Which Court Hears Portland Eviction Cases
Every residential FED case in Portland and the surrounding county runs through Multnomah County Circuit Court, and where you physically appear depends on the property's zip code, not the tenant's.
A proper termination or notice to vacate must be served, and its compliance or vacate date must pass, before filing. The landlord then files a Summons and Complaint, with a copy of the served notice attached, at either the East County Courthouse in Gresham or the Central Courthouse downtown, depending on the premises' zip code: properties in 97010, 97019, 97024, 97030, 97060, 97080, 97216, 97220, 97230, 97233, 97236, and 97266 appear at East County; everything else appears downtown. Filing can be done in person at either courthouse, by mail, or through the Oregon Judicial Department's eFiling system, which attorneys are required to use. After filing, the landlord must have the Summons and Complaint served on the tenant by the next judicial day; service cannot be done by the landlord personally, and proof of service must be filed before the first appearance. Civil filing fees are due at filing, with deferral or waiver available for those who qualify.
First appearance is usually set 7 to 14 days after filing, extending to 15 to 21 days for certain nonpayment matters, and as of January 13, 2025, first-appearance hearings at both courthouses begin at 8:45 AM, with remote appearance allowed at that stage. If no agreement is reached, the judge may set the matter for trial, and trial fees are the plaintiff's responsibility, due immediately. If the landlord wins, the court may sign a Judgment for Return of Premises, valid 60 days; the clerk can then issue a Notice of Restitution giving the tenant a final move-out deadline, after which the landlord may request a Writ of Execution for the sheriff to enforce. A writ not served within 30 days expires.
The critical limitation: FED cases are for possession only. Back rent and damages must be pursued in a separate civil or small-claims case, with small claims capped at $10,000.
Mandatory Renter Relocation Assistance (PCC 30.01.085)
This is the single biggest Portland-specific compliance risk for anyone managing delinquent accounts, and it's easy to trigger without realizing it.
Within Portland city limits, for tenancies that aren't week-to-week and where the tenant doesn't live with the landlord, relocation assistance is triggered by a no-cause eviction, non-renewal of a fixed-term lease that isn't converting to month-to-month, a qualified landlord reason for termination (certain owner or family move-in, renovation, or sale-related terminations as allowed under state law), a rent increase of 10% or more over a rolling 12-month period, or a substantial change of lease terms. Termination or increase notices must give at least 90 days before the effective date, or longer if the lease specifies.
| Unit size | Amount |
|---|---|
| Studio / SRO | $2,900 |
| 1-bedroom | $3,300 |
| 2-bedroom | $4,200 |
| 3-bedroom or larger | $4,500 |
For a termination-based trigger, payment is due no later than 45 days before the termination date stated in the notice. For a rent increase of 10% or more, if the tenant requests assistance within 45 days of receiving the increase notice, the landlord must pay within 31 days of that request, and the tenant then has six months to either repay and stay at the increased rent or terminate the tenancy. Landlords must also notify the Portland Housing Bureau's Rental Services Office of every relocation payment within 30 days of making it, using the Notice of Relocation Payment form; this is a reporting requirement and doesn't itself prove payment was made.
Exemptions exist but are narrow: week-to-week tenancies, owner-occupied duplex or ADU scenarios, certain affordable-housing rent-increase exemptions, eminent domain, immediately uninhabitable units, and some fixed-term sale or conversion disclosures. Many exemptions require a PHB Acknowledgement Letter, sometimes obtained before the rental agreement is even signed. Noncompliance carries a penalty of up to 3 times monthly rent, plus actual damages, the relocation assistance itself, and attorney fees and costs, which is why documentation of the actual reason for a termination matters as much as the termination itself.
Does Owing Relocation Assistance Offset Unpaid Rent?
This is the question that comes up constantly in practice, and the answer is no, not automatically, and self-help offsetting carries real exposure.
Relocation assistance is a landlord-to-tenant statutory payment tied to a specific termination or increase event; unpaid rent is a separate tenant-to-landlord debt under the lease and ORS Chapter 90. Neither the Portland code nor PHB materials provide an automatic right to net one against the other. Because relocation assistance is often a condition of a lawful termination, unilaterally withholding or netting it against arrears risks the 3-times-rent penalty, actual damages, and attorney fees under PCC 30.01.085(K). You may still place unpaid rent with a collection agency or pursue it in small claims or civil court, but the safer practice is to pay relocation assistance when it's genuinely due and pursue the rent balance as a separate matter. If there's a real dispute about whether relocation was triggered at all, for example because the termination was genuinely for-cause, document the basis carefully and get legal advice before treating the obligations as connected.
Screening and Deposit Rules That Affect Turnover
Two more PCC provisions matter operationally once a delinquent account turns over: how the next applicant must be screened, and how much can be collected at move-in.
Under the Fair Access in Renting (FAIR) ordinance (PCC 30.01.086), screening criteria, including standards, rent, fees, and deposit amounts, must be publicly posted before accepting applications. Landlords choose between Low-Barrier Screening, which adopts the city's preset standards (for example, not rejecting for certain older criminal convictions, credit thresholds around 500-plus, and bankruptcies older than a year), or stricter criteria, which then requires an individualized assessment before denying any applicant. Household income requirements are capped at 2 times rent, or 2.5 times rent for units priced below the maximum rent for a household earning at or below 80% of Median Family Income per PHB's table. Applications must be processed in the order received, with specific accessibility and disability-priority rules for the first eight hours of an open application period, and supplemental evidence from an applicant must be considered before any denial. State SB 291 and the FAIR rules together restrict blanket criminal-history bans in favor of individualized assessment.
On deposits (PCC 30.01.087), the combined security deposit plus last month's rent collected at move-in generally can't exceed 1.5 times monthly rent, with nuances: 1 times if no last month's rent is collected, 0.5 times if it is, and an additional 0.5 times potentially allowed for conditionally approved applicants under FAIR, payable over up to three months. Landlords must provide a written accounting of the security deposit and a completed Rental History Form within five business days of a request or of delivering a termination notice.
Current Portland Multifamily Market Conditions
Portland is a high-occupancy, soft-rent market: demand held up through 2024-2026 even as rent growth turned slightly negative.
| Source & period | Vacancy / occupancy | Rent |
|---|---|---|
| Yardi Matrix, June 2026 | 94.5% stabilized occupancy (as of March 2026) | $1,736/mo, flat 3-mo trailing, −1.8% YoY |
| CBRE, Q4 2025 | 94.6% occupancy | $1,730/unit, −2.31% QoQ |
| CoStar, 2026 | Vacancy 7% (from a 7.9% peak in late 2024) | −0.4% YoY, positive growth forecast by end-2026 |
| Multifamily NW, Spring 2026 | 6.25% vacancy, Portland-Vancouver metro (up from 5.85% Spring 2025) | Not separately reported |
No named source (Yardi, RealPage, Apartment List, or Multifamily NW) publishes a Portland-specific rent-delinquency or bad-debt figure in current public materials; a local number, if genuinely needed, would require a proprietary data request to one of those providers.
What Changed 2024-2026, and What's Coming
Portland's rules keep moving, and a property manager working this market should track the changes, not just the baseline.
January 1, 2025 brought major amendments to PCC 30.01.085, 086, and 087 covering relocation amounts, screening, and deposits. January 13, 2025 standardized Multnomah FED first appearances at 8:45 AM with remote-appearance options. August 1, 2026 introduces new UTCR Chapter 18 provisions and new required forms for Multnomah landlord-tenant FED cases. Separately, Oregon's 2026 holding-deposit law, HB 3521, tightened the statewide sequence for holding deposits (screen, approve, written statement, then collect), which interacts directly with Portland's FAIR screening workflow. And in 2026 the City of Portland allocated up to $400,000 to study its own tenant-protection laws, FAIR and relocation assistance included, signaling this area is still under active regulatory review rather than settled.
The Portland Housing Bureau's Rental Services Office actively administers and enforces the relocation and FAIR rules, including the 30-day payment reporting requirement, and Multnomah County and its partners have expanded free legal representation for low-income tenants starting from the point they receive a termination notice, not just after a court filing. No Oregon DOJ or AG enforcement bulletin specifically targeting Portland landlord debt-collection practices was found in current public materials; the state's 6-year limitations period under ORS 12.080 and standard garnishment floors apply in Multnomah County without local modification.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Which court hears eviction cases in Portland?
Multnomah County Circuit Court hears all residential Forcible Entry and Detainer (FED) cases for properties within Portland city limits and the broader county. Where you appear depends on the property's zip code: certain outer-east zip codes (97010, 97019, 97024, 97030, 97060, 97080, 97216, 97220, 97230, 97233, 97236, 97266) appear at the East County Courthouse in Gresham, and all others appear at the Central Courthouse downtown.
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Does Portland require paying relocation assistance before you can evict a delinquent tenant?
Not for a for-cause, nonpayment eviction. Mandatory Renter Relocation Assistance under PCC 30.01.085 is triggered by no-cause evictions, non-renewals of fixed-term leases, certain qualified landlord reasons, rent increases of 10% or more, and substantial lease-term changes, not by pursuing an eviction for unpaid rent. If a termination is genuinely for-cause, relocation assistance is generally not owed, but landlords should document the basis for the termination carefully given the size of the penalty for getting this wrong.
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Can a landlord offset relocation assistance against unpaid rent in Portland?
No, not as a matter of course. Relocation assistance is a landlord-to-tenant statutory payment tied to specific termination or increase events; unpaid rent is a separate tenant-to-landlord debt under the lease and ORS Chapter 90. Portland code and Portland Housing Bureau materials don't provide an automatic offset right, and unilaterally netting the two exposes a landlord to the ordinance's penalty of up to 3 times monthly rent plus actual damages, the relocation assistance itself, and attorney fees. The safer practice is to pay relocation assistance when due and pursue unpaid rent as a separate small-claims, civil, or collections matter.
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Does an FED case in Multnomah County resolve back rent, or just possession?
Possession only. A Multnomah County FED judgment produces a Judgment for Return of Premises and, ultimately, a Writ of Execution for the sheriff to enforce; it does not adjudicate the rent owed. To collect arrears, a landlord must file a separate small-claims case (at or below $10,000) or a civil complaint (above $10,000) in Circuit Court, or place the balance with a collection agency.
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Is there a Multnomah County-specific statute of limitations for rent debt?
No. Oregon's statewide 6-year limitations period for contract-based debt under ORS 12.080 applies in Multnomah County exactly as it does elsewhere in the state. No county-specific SOL rule exists; the local variation that does exist is procedural, such as sheriff civil-process scheduling for post-judgment collection, not a change to the limitations period itself.
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Is there Portland-specific data on rent delinquency?
No named-source, Portland-specific delinquency or bad-debt rate was found in current public reports from Yardi Matrix, RealPage, Apartment List, or Multifamily NW. National industry delinquency metrics exist (NMHC, AAI) but don't break out Portland separately; a local figure, if needed, would have to come from a proprietary data request to one of those providers or Multifamily NW's periodic survey.