Where affordability still lives

Its future looks bright with resources pouring in from nonprofits and the city. But can it rise up and still remain affordable?

Thursday, September 07, 2006
By Su-jin Yim and Erin Hoover Barnett
The Oregonian

On the southern fringe of the city, beyond the manors and sloping lawns of Eastmoreland, past the tidy hardware, video and coffee shops of Mount Scott, east of 82nd's strip-mall clutter, sits Lents.

Interstate 205 slices through it. The freeway hovers above the low-lying flood plain. The white noise of traffic drones through block after block of working-class homes. The center of the neighborhood at Southeast 92nd Avenue and Foster Road, once thriving with a pharmacy, a florist, appliance stores and medical offices into the early 1980s, is now a crossroads of hard-luck bars.

Lents is one of the city's last chances to stay affordable. Many families, including immigrants and former renters, find the inner city a place only the affluent can buy into. Lents, in other words, remains a place to save us from becoming the next San Francisco.

But change is coming to Lents, too.

A large storefront fixed up with Portland Development Commission money stands ready to lease. Trillium Artisans Center set up shop in a vintage building and boasts earth-friendly arts and crafts. A banner over a vacant lot advertises the revived farmers market. New condos are coming to the mouth of I-205 at Woodstock.

The number of burglaries, larcenies and auto thefts -- fueled by the methamphetamine trade -- was climbing until last year, when a crackdown on meth helped lower the rate. Million-dollar homes multiply in Happy Valley, the upscale Clackamas County community on the hills above, improving the pocketbook profile prospective businesses like. Light rail will roll through in 2009.

And Lents has emerged as a do-gooders' nirvana. Longtime activists in the housing arena from REACH to ROSE community development corporations have been there for years. Joining them are everyone from Americorps volunteers to a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded healthy lifestyles program.

Says Noelle Dobson, who runs the healthy lifestyles program, "It's kind of like the perfect storm."

People shift in their seats, their eyes blank, their arms crossed. Some sigh. Others avoid eye contact. The back-and-forth over the neighborhood association's bylaws has taken its toll of the more than 40 people gathered in the Seventh-day Adventist church for an evening meeting.

But the change to the bylaws themselves, which a committee hammered out weeks before, isn't the issue. It is the bickering. Over who was allowed at the committee meeting. About why no one brought a copy of the old bylaws this evening. About how officers handled the process. Questions coated in distrust born of change.

Finally, Becca Stavenjord, a brand-new board appointee, raises her hand.

The twentysomething starts, her brow furrowed behind her brown eyeglasses. She isn't sure exactly what to say. But she knows this: "The last few meetings have been really frustrating. The last few meetings make it hard to show up because of conversations like this." Conversations where people lob unconstructive criticism at the board and refuse to hear reasonable explanations.

"We're all trying to make progress here," the new Lents resident says.

"The progress is too fast," Gary Sargent shoots back.

And so it goes for much of the August meeting of the Lents Neighborhood Association. The tension is just another link in a chain of frustration after last fall's elections brought in a new board, many of its members recent transplants to the neighborhood.

The split gets personal between former chairwoman Judy Welch and current chairwoman Kris Nord, who live a few blocks from each other but are miles apart.

Welch, a Lents resident for 45 years, complains that newcomers wrested power and now ignore the wisdom of longtimers. Welch still lives in the house she and her husband bought more than four decades ago for $11,375. A stay-at-home mom most of her life, she dedicated untold hours to the neighborhood association.

Nord bought her first house two years ago in Lents, desperate to get into the Portland housing market. Nord insists she only wants the best for the neighborhood but is constantly stymied by Welch and her supporters. Nord grew up outside of Salem on a hops farm her family has owned for 100 years, graduated from Oregon State University, then worked in real estate. At 32, she doesn't plan to live in Lents forever.

"I could see myself selling in a couple years and investing somewhere else," she says. "But while I'm here I'd like to help move this community toward revitalizing."

The two sides met with the Office of Neighborhood Involvement to mediate their differences earlier this summer. The mediation failed. Now, it looks as though the association is lining up in a standoff of old versus new. Later this month, the neighborhood will hold annual board elections. The current board wants at least two candidates for every seat. Welch says she and her allies also are organizing.

"We don't want them to know too much about our plan ahead of time," says Welch, who plans to run again but hasn't decided for which position. Her only official duties now are organizing an ice-cream social and Founder's Day, both ceremonial, social events, both a far cry from meatier tasks involving urban renewal funds and working with police against drug houses.

"Everything I ever did they've basically taken away from me," Welch says.

Nord says she probably won't run for chairwoman again but hopes to work on neighborhood projects. She urges those who turn out to vote not to vanish afterward.

"Don't just come to get Judy back into the chair," she says, "and disappear again."

High stakes and huge potential fan the infighting. The Portland Development Commission has recommitted to Lents, which it named an urban renewal area in 1998, and will funnel $75 million to it. Property values are rising. Homes once viewed as bottom of the barrel now list for more than $200,000. Business owners in the town center who've weathered the lows -- such as Tom Nekvapil of Wishing Corner antiques -- are suddenly thinking they should buy their buildings.

Such forces spawn fear and resentment among residents who have felt kicked around for decades -- from forced annexation and hookup to the city sewer to relocating homes to make way for the freeway -- and whose family budgets leave little slack to absorb higher property taxes or rents.

"There is a problem when people feel like they have no power," says Richard Bixby, executive director of the East Portland Neighborhood Office. "There is a sense of 'They will do what they want regardless of what we say, so why bother.' The feeling of futility is pretty present, pretty dominant."

But many argue that Lents will not become the next North Mississippi Avenue or Alberta Arts District -- areas that seemed to flip from African American stronghold to white hipster enclave overnight. Lents doesn't have the quaint storefronts on walkable streets or vintage homes simply in need of a little TLC. Plus, the presence of the Johnson Creek flood plain discourages pricey redevelopment. Barring massive bulldozing and rebuilding, the modest homes and infill may be what keeps the neighborhood affordable to a wider range of people.

Even the Portland Development Commission's efforts are on a humble scale.

Whereas PDC boosted mass new development in the Pearl and South Waterfront, its work in Lents is about paving streets and adding sidewalks and parks. PDC's symbol of resurrection: a pending deal with Assurety Northwest, a Gresham insurance company that plans to move its 50 employees next summer to Foster between 89th and 92nd. Its new headquarters would include retail space on the bottom floor.

And while Lents is becoming a destination for creative types -- such as artist Sean Casey and his family, who could no longer afford to rent in the Pearl -- it remains a place for beginnings for the traditional working class. Housing activists now vie to preserve its affordability. And they've got the ear of the city. A majority of the City Council wants to dedicate 30 percent of money in urban renewal areas to ensure affordable housing, and will vote on it soon.

Crystal Andrews and her family plan to move close to Lents Park after winning money through the Lents Homeownership Initiative, a new coalition promoting home buying. With the $2,000 grant, Andrews and her husband, Abel Balderas, bridged the gap in the down payment for their three-bedroom, one-bathroom home. The couple -- Andrews is a stay-at-home mom and Portland Community College student, her husband drives a bread route for Oroweat -- paid $202,000.

"I know it's not the best of neighborhoods," Andrews, 27, says about the crime, which police still consider a significant problem. "But people are really trying to work together to make it the best."

Under a merciless sun on the hottest day of July, vendors set up shop on the vacant lot in the Lents Town Center for the neighborhood's farmers market.

The market's vibe is decidedly inclusive. The Lents Food Group -- a collection of old and new neighbors -- revived the market to address a chief concern that a majority of residents identified in a survey: Lents has little choice in food markets. It's bound to get worse with Albertsons' decision to close its neighborhood store.

The Food Group decided to play off the neighborhood's diversity, setting its market apart from others. So it's the Lents International Farmers Market. On the inaugural day, there's an African-crafts peddler. An urban farmer offering to deliver his organic produce by rickshaw. And an Asian American family selling flowers that are wilting in the heat.

Laura Bouma, with 2-year-old son Aspen cavorting about the grounds, got involved with the food group and the market because she wanted a place to buy locally grown food. She and her husband, who is working on his Ph.D., run a home day-care business. They moved to Lents two years ago from Gresham. The family has no car, so its members walk, bike or bus everywhere. Bouma likes the laid-back nature of her new neighborhood, a refreshing change from the experience in suburbia.

"I thought that this would be the neighborhood where we could afford to buy a house and the neighbors wouldn't come and complain if we didn't mow our lawn for two days," says Bouma.

A few weekends later, volunteers from New Hope Community Church slurp on snow cones with neighbors at a block party.

Phyllis Rice, who has lived on the block for 30 years, greets neighbor Guadalupe Ponce and lets Ponce's children pet her Great Dane.

When Ponce and her family moved to the block six years ago, they didn't know anyone. "Now we do," pipes up her 9-year-old, David Uribe, taking in the dunk tank.

Rice, 56, moved in when mostly retired people lived on the block. She watched the freeway come and saw the recession of the early 1980s take its toll.

"It's coming back up now," says Rice. "I've just been waiting for a long time for this to come around."

She falls into conversation with Rodney Nelson, 51, and Marilyn Payne, 55, who videotapes the festivities. They talk about the moniker "Felony Flats" that over time has been used to refer to parts of Lents.

Rice asks: Where is Felony Flats?

"We're standing on it," Payne says.

Two years ago, police chased and shot a suspect in the front yard of the house they're standing in front of. But on this day, there are no cops. Neighbors munch hot dogs and kids weave through on their bikes as soft-rock music rises into the summer air.