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King pins portland4/29/2023 ![]() ![]() A tenant advocate says his experience may be extreme, but the lack of response is also typical of what others in Portland’s low-vacancy rental market face. Porter says he’s called every city agency he can think of, to no avail. Porter’s been homeless before, just like the people outside his door, and he fears that he will be again if he doesn’t grit his teeth and make the best of it. Although there are plenty of tents on city streets, situations like Porter’s are less obvious downtown because few people living in Pearl District condos are likely to miss a rent payment and end up outside.īut in Porter’s neighborhood-Powellhurst-Gilbert-that line is bright. Porter’s experience shows that for people working marginal jobs in high-rent, low-vacancy Portland, the line between being housed and being homeless is thin. Porter works as the birthday party manager at the KingPins bowling alley on Southeast 92nd Avenue, a job he loves but that doesn’t pay as much as he’d like. Even one-bedroom apartments in his ratty complex go for $1,600. He doesn’t think he could find anything near that price in a normal place. So why does he stay? Because the rent is $1,200, and he splits it with his roommate, Katie Pranger, 45. GHB, or gamma-hydroxybutyrate, is a party drug that can knock you out if you take too much, or if you combine it with alcohol. During a particularly bad flood last year, he went upstairs and a man said he had taken GHB and passed out after trying to fix the water heater. The deluges are drug-related, Porter suspects. It’s fallen in five times, he says, once on his bed. The greatest hazard is that they keep flooding the upstairs apartment, which in turn soaks Porter’s ceiling. They’re squatters, Porter says, and there are new ones every few months. Very often, one of the people up there calls him a faggot. Once, someone blasted away at a car in the street with a shotgun. Some nights, the bass from the music is so loud that it shakes the pictures off his walls. Or because there are people living in cars and RVs at the entrance to the parking lot. Or because it’s small for two people, one large cat and a lot of stuffed animals. Not because it’s just west of the concrete wall along Interstate 205 off Southeast Division Street. Lu’kas Porter is willing to bet anyone that he lives in the worst apartment in Portland. (Anthony Effinger) By Anthony Effinger Februat 5:30 am PST Indoor Rain: Lu'kas Porter looks up at the latest hole in his ceiling. ![]()
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