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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 1, 2010)
September I, 2010 <r'!V IJ o rtla n ò (Observer IN S ID E This page Sponsored by: Page 3 FredMeyer The Week n Review What's on your list today?, I -tech nolo S ustainability C lassifieds F ood page 12 Cristina Palacios, safe housing coordinator for the Oregon Community Alliance o f Tenants, returns a call from a renter in distress. Landlord-Tenant Conflicts Economy puts strain on inspections J ake T homas T he P ortland O bserver by O pinion y pages IS-19 EALTH C alendar • ' , page 22-23 page 24 A ngela Lopez rem em bers when her home was making her child sick. L opez, a tran sp lan t from Mexico and mother of three, said she spent two years scrubbing mold her in small rental house in northeast Portland with Clorox and soap. But somehow the black fuzz always seemed to grow back on the walls and ceilings of the kitchen and bedrooms. Her 5-year-old son’s asthma, which had been dormant, came roaring back from the mold, ac cording to Lopez. She said she complained to her landlord, who put a lamp-sized ventilation hole in the living room ceiling covered with metal grating, which she said made the dwelling frosty during the colder months. After what she described as a fruitless back-and-forth with her landlord, who she claimed re peatedly painted over the mold, she called the housing inspector and left several messages that she said weren’t returned. Her final phone call was met with an auto mated voice telling her the mes sage box was full, according to Lopez. The heat only worked in her bedroom, she said, and the fluc tuations between hot and cold exacerbated her child's condition. The staff at a local clinic told her that her house, which she shared with her husband, two other chil dren, mother and father-in-law, was affecting her child's health. After much hand-wringing, she and her husband decided to break the lease with her landlord, who couldn't be reached for comment. Contention has often marked relations between landlords and tenants, who occupy about 42 percent of Portland’s housing. But as the Great Recession per sists conflicts between the two have grown pricklier as money for housing inspectors has dried up. As revenues have dropped off for the Bureau of Development Services, the city agency has had to lay off building inspectors who keep dwellings inhabitable by en forcing the city's building code. According to bureau spokes person Ross Caron, housing in spectors have been reduced to five (about half) as a result of the cuts. “We have experienced a slow down in our response time,” said Caron. He explained that the bureau has prioritized complaints it re ceives. For instance, a tenant who complains about a serious prob lem, like a lack of heat or a broken refrigerator would receive more immediate attention than other types of complaints. However, complaints that are somewhere in between in sever ity will be responded to in five to 10 days, he said. A landlord will have 30 days to correct the prob lems. If they don’t they will be assessed a fine that, depending on how many units are in the build ing, could be as high as $500 a continued on page 4