Murmurs: Housing Providers See Costs From Property Damage Balloon

FAMILY ALLEGES BULL RUN DISRUPTIONS: A Boring, Ore., family alleges in a lawsuit filed in Clackamas County Circuit Court on Sept. 28 that the city’s $2.6 billion Bull Run Filtration Project has subjected their home to “near-daily noise, vibration, dust, and blocked access” and has “disrupted” nearly all of the family’s daily activities, including sleep. The 95-acre treatment facility to filter Portland’s water is expected to wrap in 2029. The Guillory family says a pipeline being built adjacent to their home “requires the use of heavy equipment and controlled explosive blasts to excavate.” In a September 2024 email, the lawsuit states, Tyson Guillory wrote to project staff that he was “becoming increasingly worried about our house” because “as I’m writing this email my entire house is shaking and windows are rattling.” In subsequent emails over the next two years, he sent the city recordings of the noise and rattling caused by construction. “The disruption has caused the children increased illness, heightened emotional distress, and difficulty maintaining a healthy and consistent sleep routine,” the lawsuit alleges, adding that project staff has repeatedly blocked the family from entering their own driveway. The lawsuit seeks $525,000 in damages. The city declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation.

PPS ENROLLMENT IS DOWN FROM FORECASTS: As Portland Public Schools officials continue to ready students, parents and educators for the pending list of schools that might be affected by closures and redrawn attendance boundaries, the district’s steeply declining enrollment has been used as justification for distributing students across fewer buildings. But on Sept. 15, Portland School Board member Stephanie Engelsman spelled out a concern that’s swirled among school communities recently: parents anecdotally reporting large class sizes in early grades. Last year, PPS also posted optimistic news that the number of kindergarten students it enrolled was up for the first time since 2012–13. This was, Engelsman said, “something that we should try to hold on to, rather than potentially let slip away with massive changes.” But preliminary enrollment data might prove last year’s optimistic enrollment numbers a fluke. Richard Smith, PPS’s senior director of data and accountability, told the School Board he didn’t have good news to report on the enrollment front. The district estimates it’s enrolled 65 fewer kindergartners for the 2026–27 academic year than in 2025–26, Smith said, 100 shy of what it had projected. “And unfortunately, we’re down across the district below what we projected and staffed for,” Smith said Sept. 15. “That’s a sobering reality that unfortunately the enrollment decline is not stopping.”

HOUSING PROVIDERS SEE COSTS FROM PROPERTY DAMAGE BALLOON: In recent years, some of Portland’s largest nonprofit providers of supportive housing have begun to face a remarkable new expense: They effectively had to start self-insuring their properties after insurance companies backed away amid rising costs to repair units burned or flooded or left in disarray. Nonprofit leaders discuss the matter gingerly. Among tenants who need housing are people with high-acuity psychiatric and addiction disorders. “They’re not ready to be housed yet,” Cascadia Health CEO James Schroeder tells WW. “They need some preparation to get there so that we don’t have things like this happen.” When someone lights a fire in a unit, he explains, that’s bad for them—they’re probably going to get evicted—but it is also bad for other people on the property trying to get their lives on track. He confirmed to City Councilor Steve Novick during a recent work session that the issue jeopardizes housing providers’ finances as property insurers bow out. In 2023, Cascadia Health says its property insurance deductible per unit jumped from $10,000 to $100,000. Another major housing provider, Central City Concern, tells WW of a similar increase, and it says its insurance premiums have continued to rise anyway. CCC, a spokesperson said, had to seek a new insurer at a time when there is “reduced market interest in covering affordable housing in general, and in the Portland market specifically.” Multnomah County controls who gets prioritized for supportive housing. Schroeder believes the city needs more intermediate spaces for people to get stabilized before moving in to permanent housing.

GENENTECH BREAKS GROUND ON MAJOR FACTORY PROJECT: Biotech leaders and politicians descended on an office park in Hillsboro on Sept. 28 to celebrate the groundbreaking of a new $750 million factory expansion by biotech company Genentech. Cameras clicked as officials smiled and symbolically shoveled dirt into the air. Specific terms of the state’s deal with Genentech remain unclear. Gov. Tina Kotek’s office has said the agreement includes “a forgivable loan from the Governor’s Strategic Reserve Fund” to help offset some of the initial capital investment costs for the project, but a spokesperson declined to offer specifics, saying final contract negotiations remain ongoing. (For context, Oregon’s current two-year budget allotted the Strategic Reserve Fund about $15 million, some of which has already been allocated.) Genentech CEO Ashley Magargee, who flew in for the occasion, tells WW the biggest factors for the company when siting a factory are: (1) Does the area have a skilled workforce? (2) Can we work with good state and local leaders on issues like permitting and logistics? And (3) will the community embrace them? Asked how Oregon could improve its scores, Magargee said the state had “nailed it.” Kotek, who is deep in a tough reelection campaign, projected a jubilant spirit. She told Genentech employees and other attendees: “We are on a roll, people.”