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Fifty-six disabled and elderly tenants are being evicted from the Roosevelt Plaza downtown because the building is being sold to a hotel chain planning to renovate the eight-story building.
The tenants, who receive a federal housing subsidy, are angry because the dislocation presents physical, emotional and economic hardships for them. "People are very worried and distressed," says Marih Alyn-Claire, a 46-year-old tenant who suffers from a brain disease similar to Alzheimer's.
For the tenants--most of whom are elderly and all of whom are poor--the eviction means they will lose their convenient access to a supermarket, mass transit and other amenities. The Roosevelt is located at Southwest 9th Avenue and Salmon Street, just three blocks from a Safeway; there is no comparable available housing downtown that close to a supermarket.
The eviction underscores the continuing loss of affordable housing downtown. Housing activist Susan Emmons calculates that the city is already 1,005 units short of its goal for downtown low-income housing. And that's before the Roosevelt eviction.
"We're losing 300 net units a year," says Emmons, executive director of the nonprofit Northwest Pilot Project. "We keep asking ourselves, 'Relocate them to where?' This is a terrible tragedy for these people."
"What really angers me is that the owners and managers are not even trying to help us," says Alyn-Claire.
Help is coming, says Barry Brenneke, who manages the building for its principal owners, Hans and Kenneth Juhr.
Brenneke says the hotel chain--whose identity he would not disclose--will create a relocation fund for tenants, and he hopes to have Emmons' group manage the money. The amount of the fund is still being negotiated.
City Commissioner Gretchen Kafoury met with Emmons and the Roosevelt's owners to see whether the city could buy the building. "It was too little, too late," says Brenneke.
But the Juhrs have another low-income housing property up for sale--the 90-unit Oak Apartments. That downtown property is "fair game" for the city, Brenneke says.
Emmons says the prospect of losing 90 units at the Oak, in addition to the Roosevelt, raises two larger issues: the lack of a city strategy to preserve downtown housing and the lack of a city ordinance that would make building owners pay some relocation costs.
Negotiations for the Roosevelt sale started earlier this year when the U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development announced it would reduce the amount of subsidy it provides to tenants at the building. Under the current agreement with HUD, the Roosevelt receives $779 a month for a one-bedroom apartment, with tenants contributing a small share based on their income.
Under the new HUD guidelines, however, the Roosevelt would receive, on average, $180 a month less per apartment. "The owners had a fat deal, a great deal," says Brenneke. But, he adds, there were many "lean years" since 1977 when they first contracted with HUD.
Brenneke contends Roosevelt residents will be able to find comparable housing in the region.
Emmons disagrees. "They will not find such a safe, walking location," she says. "Their housing is going to be downgraded. I don't care what anybody says." --BY TOP
Follow-up: Losing Faith
Only nine months after the board of Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon voted overwhelmingly to endorse a boycott of major local food packagers, their faith seems to be wavering.
Back in 1992, the local farmworkers union, Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (better known as PCUN), called a boycott to strengthen the collective bargaining rights of the mostly Latino field workers who pick crops in the Willamette Valley.
Last November, EMO, a coalition of 16 religious denominations, voted to honor the boycott, which now includes Kraemer Farms, Steinfeld's Products Co., NORPAC Foods Inc. and Wholesome and Hearty Foods ("Gardenburger of Gethsemane," WW, April 24, 1996). But EMO is holding a special meeting on Wednesday to vote on a resolution withdrawing support of the boycott.
EMO board president John Dennis, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Corvallis, says the Oregon Farm Bureau--an umbrella group for Oregon agribusiness--has agreed to "concessions that seemed to be heading in the right direction." Dennis didn't elaborate on the OFB's promised "concessions," but says assurances have been given that farmworker conditions will improve.
PCUN boycott coordinator Leone Bicchieri says the concessions don't guarantee farmworker rights to unionize. "Free and fair elections for union representation was what the EMO's original proposal was all about," he points out. Furthermore, Bicchieri notes, OFB went head to head with EMO on two contentious bills this session. First, OFB tried to exempt farmworkers from the state's new minimum-wage law. Second, they support Senate Bill 1205, which would further restrict farmworker rights to seek better working conditions. Bicchieri suggests that EMO's move to drop the boycott has something to do with the group's connection to the Steinfeld family, which operates a pickle-processing plant in North Portland. In a letter to boycott supporters sent out last week, Bicchieri notes that the family has been a major financial supporter of EMO and belongs to Trinity Episcopal, where EMO's incoming president, the Rev. Anthony Thurston, is head bishop. "I don't know Rev. Thurston," says Bicchieri, "so I'm not in a position to question his integrity, but from where we're standing, it doesn't look nice."
Bicchieri says Thurston would not respond to PCUN's faxes. When contacted by WW, Thurston declined to comment on the EMO proposal. --JF TOP
CORRECTION
In last week's cover story ("The Good, the Bad and the Awful," WW, June 25, 1997), lines of text were inadvertently cut off in two places. The last paragraph under Rep. Ryan Deckert (page 26) should have read: "The book is still out on him, but he probably deserves another shot to see what he's learned," one lobbyist says. "He was awfully young to be thrown into a legislative session, but he's come along." The last sentence under Rep. Charles Starr (page 28) should have read: And his score for brains is the lowest of anyone.
WW regrets the error.
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