By GILLIAN FLACCUS
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Protesters barricaded streets in a residential neighborhood in Portland, Oregon, and set booby traps for police after officers arrested about a dozen people in a clash over gentrification and the eviction of a Black and Indigenous family from a home.
Several city blocks remained closed by a series of blockades Wednesday fabricated with wood, metal and wire fencing. Protesters dressed in black and wearing ski masks stood watch from atop a nearby wall.
The street behind the blockade in the residential neighborhood of homes, coffee shops and restaurants was laced with booby traps aimed at keeping officers out — including homemade spike strips, piles of rocks and thick bands of plastic wrap stretched at neck-height across the roadway.
Mayor Ted Wheeler, who weathered a summer of civil unrest that almost cost him his re-election, said late Tuesday that the city would not tolerate an “autonomous zone.”
He added that the protesters were engaged in an “illegal occupation” that was intimidating neighbors and inflaming tensions in a city that was wracked for months by nightly protests until just a few weeks ago.
“It’s time for the encampment and occupation to end. There are many ways to protest and work toward needed reform. Illegally occupying private property, openly carrying weapons, threatening and intimidating people are not among them,” he said.
Supporters of the Kinney family, the Black and Indigenous family that was foreclosed upon in 2018, planned to speak with reporters later Wednesday.
The occupation of the property began in September after a judge rejected the family’s request for an emergency stay.
But it gained steam and national attention on Tuesday when police officers responding to the new owners’ complaints conducted a dawn sweep and arrested about a dozen people.
The 124-year-old house is known locally as the Red House on Mississippi and was one of the few remaining Black-owned homes on North Mississippi Avenue.
It’s in a historically Black part of Portland that for decades was one of the few areas Black residents could own homes because of racist real estate and zoning laws.
Over the past two decades, the area has rapidly gentrified — with brew pubs, coffee shops, bicycle shops and upscale condominium complexes replacing Black residences.
The current clash draws on that troubled history for context and it also fits into a larger worry in Oregon — and nationally — about what will happen when pandemic-inspired eviction moratoriums enacted by Oregon and the U.S. government expire in the coming weeks.
Oregon state lawmakers are debating a proposal to extend that moratorium until July 1 and also establish a compensation fund for struggling landlords.
Housing advocates worry that if nothing is done, a tsunami of evictions in 2021 will lead to hundreds or thousands of newly homeless people in Portland and around Oregon.
One complaint of protesters is that the Kinney family should not have been evicted in the middle of a pandemic and should be protected by the eviction moratorium.
But the moratorium only applies to foreclosures that are a result of pandemic-related financial straits and the developer that now owns the former Kinney home bought it at a foreclosure auction in 2018.
According to a history posted online by the group protesting the eviction, the property belonged to the Kinney family since the 1950s and was initially purchased in full with cash.
But the Kinneys took out a new mortgage to pay defense lawyers after a 17-year-old son was arrested in 2002 after a traffic crash. He pleaded guilty to assault in a plea deal, according to court records.
The new loan was resold several times after the housing crash of 2007-2008 and the house was sold to Urban Housing Development LLC at auction in 2018 — but the Kinneys kept living there, according to court papers.
The developer sued in 2019 and the Kinneys counter-sued, arguing that illegal and predatory bank tactics cost them their home. They later filed a motion for an emergency stay that allowed them to stay in the house while the pandemic was raging.
Mark Passannante, an attorney for Urban Housing Development, did not immediately Wednesday respond to a phone message seeking comment.
In September, a judge rejected the stay and ordered the family out. Protesters began an occupation of the property shortly after that decision and have been there ever since.
Police said in a statement Tuesday that between Sept. 1 and Nov. 30, there have been 81 calls for service to the property for fights, gunshots, burglary, vandalism and noise complaints, among other things.
Surrounding homeowners also complained that the sidewalks were blocked and they could not access their own homes, according to police.
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