Between July 2021 and February 2022, Oregon Consumer Justice hosted 12 community listening sessions in partnership with community organizations to understand how Oregonians experience consumer injustice. These initial sessions included low-income communities, Black and Latinx communities, immigrant communities, rural communities, elders, and people who had experienced incarceration to focus on consumers who most frequently experience predatory behaviors.
And what we heard was both troubling and alarming. At shocking rates, Oregonians are the victims of scams, unscrupulous auto dealers, telemarketing ploys, and hard-to-escape service agreements. And despite the hard work of lawyers, advocates, and staff at regulatory agencies, what we heard points to significant barriers to accessing justice.
“It’s hard to ask the right questions if you don’t know what you should know. So it’s easy to be taken advantage of.” —OCJ listening session participant
Four key themes surfaced throughout the sessions:
- Consumer justice is not a reality for the people we spoke with or their families and community members.
- Predatory actors harm people in a large variety of ways.
- People lack easy access to enforcement.
- People lack access to trusted legal support.
Sign Up For Our Newsletter