P H O T O B Y K E N H A W K IN S
Foreclosed, vacant and boarded up, this house on North Buffalo Street is one o f hundreds in postforeclosure limbo across the city, housing advocates say.
BY AM A N D A WALDROUPE
Neighborhoods
g ra p p le w ith
rem nants o f the
foreclosure
crisis: empty
homes
STAFF WRITER
T
h e h o u se a t 1310 N. Buffalo St. h a s b e e n
v a c a n t a n d b o a rd e d u p fo r fo u r y e a rs.
It’s last owner died in 2008. The house
was left to the man’s family, but he had become
estranged from them. Not wanting anything to do
with him, even in death, they didn’t want to keep
the house.
Perhaps they could have sold it. But their
deceased family member had taken out a large loan
on the house for renovations, one so large that the
house was worth less than the loan amount after
the recession caused property values to decline.
They decided to walk away from the house,
sending it into foreclosure.
“Nobody blames them,” says Chris Duffy,
president of the Arbor Lodge neighborhood
association, where the house is located. “They
simply wanted to let it go and have nothing to do
with it.”
Left vacant, the utilities were shut off. The
house was boarded up, but squatters moved in. “It
became quite a hub for drug trafficking and illegal
activities,” says Duffy, who lives a few doors down
— closer to the house than she likes.
The police served a warrant on the squatters,
who left the house. Housing inspectors from the
city’s Bureau of Developmental Services cleaned
the outside of the house. “Trash had been dumped
all around it,” Duffy says. “There was drug
paraphernalia. Part of the fence had been stolen.
Part of a wheelchair ramp had been carted away. It
was a mess.”
A couple living in a house next door moved out.
Squatters eventually moved back into the house,
and Duffy says the house was listed on Craigslist
as a “free place to crash.”
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“They will even describe how to access the
place, which window to crawl in through, or what
door is not securely boarded up,” Duffy says.
F i n a ll y , i n l a t e 2 0 1 0 , M a r k W e lls , N o r t h
Portland’s crime prevention coordinator with the
Office of Neighborhood Involvement, scoured
Multnomah County’s property records for almost
three hours and discovered that the house was
owned by Bank of America.
Wells was told by an attorney in Texas that Bank
of America would auction the house. It never did.
Wells tried to get a good neighbor agreement in
place, which would have allowed the police to enter
the property if crimes were being committed, and
allowed the city to take care of the property and
stop it from deteriorating any further.
Well’s said the attorney stopped returning his
calls and e-mails. An agreement was never put in
place. In late 2011, the city’s Bureau of
Development Services boarded the house up again.
Duffy says there haven’t been any more squatters.
he house on Buffalo Street is one of
hundreds of empty foreclosed homes
throughout Portland, many of which are in
the North and Northeast sections of the city.
are a silent witness to Oregon’s foreclosure crisis,
but the effect they continue to have on
neighborhoods is palpable.
“They are the worse thing that could happen to
a neighborhood, to bring it downhill,” says Duffy.
It’s difficult to know how many empty homes are
in Portland, says Angus Maguire, spokesperson for
We Are Oregon, an advocacy organization backed
by the local SEIU. Late last year, We Are Oregon
T
held a civil action in which it placed “Bank Blight”
signs on the lawns of empty, foreclosed homes.
Volunteers visited almost 500 homes.
T o lo c a te th e p r o p e r tie s , W e A r e O r e g o n b o u g h t
a list from R ealtyT rac, w hich lists fo rec lo sed
properties for sale. The RealtyTrac lists, Maguire
says, “are snapshots in time.”
“The information changes really quickly,” he
says. “It rapidly loses value as a source of
information. It’s super frustrating.”
The majority of foreclosed, empty homes are
bank-owned properties, says Angela Martin,
executive director of Economic Fairness Oregon,
an advocacy organization working on behalf
homeowners experiencing foreclosure. “There is
no local owner. There is no family attached to it.
There is no one who bought it and is going to rent
it,” Martin says.
There are two scenarios in which a home in the
foreclosure process becomes empty. The first is
when homeowners are evicted because of
foreclosure. “In this situation, the bank clearly
becomes the owner of the property and knows it,”
Maguire says.
The second is when residents going through the
foreclosure process “self-evict,” or move out before
they are legally required to do so.
They In cases where the property owner is evicted by
the bank, the bank, “knows it has responsibility for
upkeep of the property. Whether if follows through
on that responsibility varies,” Maguire says.
“It’s not a given that every bank-owned property
is going to become blighted,” Martin says.
But the experience of Maguire, Martin, and
people living near these empty homes, such as
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