About 

Evicted in Oregon is a resource and a research project. It aims to reframe issues of displacement and support tenant organizing by using a research justice approach to studying eviction.

Research Approach

The project is examining evictions in Oregon using phronetic social science; an approach to research defined by Bent Flyvbjerg in his 2001 book, Making Social Science Matter (Cambridge University Press).

This approach puts emphasis on micro-practices—the everyday communications, decisions, and activities through which policy is carried out—with particular attention to power dynamics. It asks researchers to consider what is going on and what ought to be going on to achieve just outcomes.

The four questions of phronetic research are:

  1. What's going on?

  2. Who's winning and who's losing?

  3. Are we okay with that?

  4. If not, what are we going to do about it?

Understanding power — the ability to control outcomes, to set terms of negotiation, and even to frame our definitions of eviction—is essential for our understanding of eviction. Power is part of the dynamic between landlords and tenants, and the rights and responsibilities accorded to each. It is also revealed through a legal and policy landscape that sets the terms of the eviction process and also obscures eviction from the administrative and research record.