A real estate investor in Portland, Oregon, said he would sell a foreclosed home back to its occupants after anti-gentrification protests barricaded the building for three days.
The Kinneys, a black and indigenous family, have lived in the home since the 1950s. They purchased the house with cash at a time when the city’s redlining policies prevented them from securing a mortgage, according to a website set up to support the Red House on Mississippi.
Roman Ozeruga bought the home in 2018 for $260,000 at a foreclosure auction, according to WRAL.
“We are a small family business — we don’t seek to hurt anyone, of course,” Ozeruga said. “We’re overwhelmed by the attention to this. We’ve already offered to sell back the property at cost because, of course, we’ve paid taxes, legal fees, bank fees, etc.”
In the intervening years between the Kinneys’ purchase of the home and their foreclosure, the neighborhood has become a hotbed for gentrification — the house, once part of one of the city’s predominantly black neighborhoods, sits near a pub and food cart pod, according to the New York Times, and an apartment building that sold for $6.3 million in 2016.
William Kinney Jr., who grew up in the house, and his wife, Julie Metcalf Kinney, took out an adjustable-rate mortgage on the home to pay for legal fees after their son was sentenced to 10 years in prison for an automobile accident. When rates on that loan became too high, they refinanced with Beneficial Oregon. The mortgage went through a number of transfers resulting from banking mergers, and the Kinneys said they were often double-billed by different banks before a foreclosure was declared in 2018.
Ozeruga and his business, Urban Housing Development, attempted to evict the Kinneys in 2018 after purchasing the building, but the Kinneys’ federal complaint and a state counterclaim delayed the eviction. UHD won the court battles and the possession of the home in February 2020, but two months later, Oregon declared a moratorium on evictions, followed by a federal eviction moratorium in September.
An encampment was formed around the house in September, according to organizers, to prevent the eviction that was approved by Multnomah County. On Tuesday, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler said that law enforcement would dismantle the encampment and enforce the eviction.
“I am authorizing the Portland Police to use all lawful means to end the illegal occupation on North Mississippi Avenue and to hold those violating our community’s laws accountable,” Wheeler said. “There will be no autonomous zone in Portland.”
I am authorizing the Portland Police to use all lawful means to end the illegal occupation on North Mississippi Avenue and to hold those violating our community’s laws accountable. There will be no autonomous zone in Portland.
— Mayor Ted Wheeler (@tedwheeler) December 9, 2020
The Tuesday raid, which involved about a dozen people being arrested, did not stop the protests, according to ABC News. Demonstrators reportedly barricaded the house with fencing and lumber and booby-trapped the surrounding area with “homemade spike strops, piles of rocks and thick bands of plastic wrap stretched at neck-height across the roadway.”
Ozeruga said that he would sell the home at cost and that he had contacted Wheeler to negotiate a settlement and end the protests.
