Skip to main content
- ADDRESS: 3735 SE Martins St.
- YEAR BUILT: 1991
- SQUARE FOOTAGE: 6,345
- MARKET VALUE: $1,229,560
- OWNER: Orvalee Ann Farris Revocable Living Trust
- HOW LONG IT’S BEEN EMPTY: Since 2019
- WHY IT’S EMPTY: Its owner died.
By her daughter’s telling, Orvalee Farris, who died in 2020, was there for the birth of the adult foster care industry in Oregon.
Farris died in 2020 from breast cancer at age 77, leaving behind a house in the Eastmoreland neighborhood that for nearly two decades had served as an adult care home for a rotating cast of residents, never more than five at a time. Farris, who worked as an emergency room nurse before moving into the adult care world, oversaw the operation at the beige building, which is now surrounded by untidy trees and covered in moss.
But in 2019, her daughter LaDonna Stearns says, Farris closed the home after her cancer diagnosis. When Farris died the following year, Stearns says, she and her siblings learned that their mom had fallen behind on loan payments she’d taken out when she first bought the building in 2007. (Court filings suggest outstanding loans to the banks as of spring 2023 topped $195,000.)
It didn’t help that the building itself needed major repairs, or that a November 2021 fire tore the roof off of the whole thing.
“What do you do? It’s unfortunate,” Stearns says. “We were hoping someone would take it over, but sometimes things just don’t work out.”
At least two banks filed to foreclose on the property in 2023 and 2024. The Portland City Council also moved to foreclose on the building in February. Farris’ living relatives had decided not to pay the outstanding loans, and the banks wanted to recoup their losses. In May, a judge ordered the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office to sell the property at auction.
Late last month, a demolition permit was filed with the city to tear down the property—if nothing else, it’s a foolproof way to keep the occasional squatter away.
Farris was a deeply religious woman, Stearns says: “She was a good person.” And she taught Stearns to love old people.
“I really grew to love elderlies,” Stearns says. “I’d clean all their nails, I’d fix all their hair. Just being in their rooms, talking to them, they loved me.”