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It's not often somebody walks into the Multnomah County tax collector's office and plunks down more than $50,000 in cash—but nothing about Mary Holden's story is ordinary.
Holden, 55, is the executive director of Give Us This Day, the troubled Portland foster care provider recently shut down by state regulators after an investigation determined Holden and her board misspent or wasted $2 million.
She is also experienced with foreclosure.
Holden's personal residence in West Linn is currently in foreclosure, as it has been four previous times, and three properties Give Us This Day operated as group foster homes bounced in and out of foreclosure.
But on Wednesday, Holden staved off foreclosure of the last remaining group home she controlled.
That property, a 5,550-square-foot Tudor home on Northeast Rodney Avenue, is assessed at $825,000. It is technically owned by a long-defunct nonprofit called Alfred Yaun Child Care Centers. (That organization legally ceased to exist in 2001, but Holden was nominally its executive director and placed foster children in its primary asset, the Rodney Avenue house.)
Because both Alfred Yaun and Give Us This Day many years ago ceased filing the tax returns required to maintain nonprofit status, the Multnomah County tax assessor put the Rodney Avenue house back on the property tax rolls effective 2008. (Holden fought that move in tax court, but the county prevailed.)
Multnomah County notified Holden earlier this year that if Alfred Yaun did not pay back taxes by Wednesday, Sept. 30, the county would seize the house for six years of unpaid taxes.
That same Sept. 30 deadline applied to other properties in similar arrears, and so there was a lot of activity at the tax collection window on the first floor of county headquarters at 701 SE Hawthorne Blvd.
At 2:51 pm, an associate of Holden's named Jacqueline Williams walked up to the tax window carrying a bag. From that bag, Williams produced $50,299 in cash, paying off four years of arrears, with interest—enough to allow Alfred Yaun and Holden to hang on to the house for another year.
Normally, people pay their taxes with a check. Records show Holden has regularly failed to pay employees and creditors, and former employees say her foster group homes often lacked food, hygiene supplies and other basics.
So where did the bag of cash come from? Holden did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
Willamette Week