Skip to main contentThe battle of PHAN vs. Phan centers on a new 7,700-square-foot house with towering, 100-year-old Sequoias out back.
But the fighting parties—the Parkrose Heights Association of Neighbors and Rev. Van Phan—aren't family. They're neighbors in Northeast Portland. And the enormous two-story "house" in question isn't a home, at least not according to Phan's neighbors anyway.
They say it's actually a Lutheran church operating illegally under the City of Portland's zoning code, which doesn't allow churches in residential zones without a special review to address parking and other safety concerns.
Although this house never got that review, the building's owner says it doesn't matter because his home isn't a church. He says he has a large extended family (61 members) and that he just wants to worship with them in peace. "I thought I can use my house for my faith and my culture," he wrote in a Jan. 21 email to the City of Portland.
Seven months later the building on Northeast 102nd Avenue has become a point of contention in a neighborhood debate about the city agency responsible for policing new construction, the Bureau of Development Services. Neighbors say BDS has abdicated its power when it comes to enforcing parts of the zoning codes. The results of that weakness are particularly stark in East Portland, where development pressures are shifting along with changing demographics, another neighbor says.
"The rules have not caught up with society," says Bonny McKnight, a longtime neighborhood activist who, in 2004, ran against Commissioner Randy Leonard, who now oversees BDS.
In this case, the Parkrose Heights Association of Neighbors represents a middle-class neighborhood in outer Northeast Portland. And the Rev. Van Phan is a 71-year-old immigrant from Vietnam who is also an associate pastor of Holy Cross Lutheran Church elsewhere in East Portland.
In 2008, Phan's son An Phan, acting as a general contractor, tore down the single-story ranch house on his father's half-acre lot just south of Northeast Knott Street while his father lived in another home. He built a structure about four times bigger than the original dwelling. When a city inspector asked the son later why the home had a stage, he told them it was a "home theater" for his father, according to city records.
"We had an inclination that it sure looked like a funny house and it looked like it was intended as a church," says Mike Liefeld, a manager with BDS's neighborhood inspection division.
BDS, which is responsible for reviewing and approving construction plans, has cut inspectors and greatly reduced inspections since the recession started. But even with more resources, BDS would be limited in enforcing the zoning code after the Phans told inspectors they weren't building a church, Liefeld says. "It's very hard to prove what people are doing," he says.
Parkrose resident Pete Natwick isn't so convinced. Every Sunday at 11 am, dozens of cars fill the paved side and back yards surrounding the Phan home, which stands next to Natwick's 102-year-old former farmhouse. The cars spill over into the Phan home's front lawn. By 12:30 pm one recent Sunday, the cars were gone.
A 57-year-old contractor who installs window coverings, Natwick calls the house next door a "pimped-up horse barn" that appears from the outside to have a second-floor sanctuary for worship.
It's not the aesthetics that bug Natwick. It's his feeling that his neighbors have deceived the city and skirted a rule that would have required the Phans to seek a conditional land-use review if the property were legally a church.
Without that review, city officials can't insist the Phan family take mitigating steps like ensuring enough parking. The neighborhood association did request that the Phans not let people park on 102nd Avenue. The city also collected the license plate numbers of family members so they could check if only relatives parked at the home. But since BDS inspectors don't work on weekends, it's up to the neighbors to police the parking.
"What happens next?" Natwick asks. "If this can fly, anything can fly. Does that mean if I want to build a strip club over here and call it a house, I can do it?"
Neighbors first alerted BDS about the possibility of an illegal church in December, after the city had already raised and subsequently dismissed its suspicions.
With a fresh complaint in hand, however, the city investigated further and uncovered this winter what appeared to be new evidence that Phan may have intended to use the home as a church. That evidence was a church newsletter posted online. It announced the 102nd Avenue building's dedication as a "house church" on Nov. 28, 2009.
The son says the dispute is simply a miscommunication his family has worked to resolve. The building is not open to the public, he says, only to family and "special friends." (Multnomah County records show the Phans have not applied for tax-exempt status available to churches.) "It was not a dedication of a church because it's not a church," he says. "It was a commemorative event."
WWeek 2015