PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Residents of a dead-end, cul-de-sac street in Southeast Portland are getting unwanted attention from the city after trying to clean up illegal dumping.
Stacy Wilson and other neighbors in the Creston neighborhood say they’ve been dealing with illegal dumping for a long time: sofas, love seats and other garbage.
Wilson says the street has even flooded because of excessive debris.
Wilson says he and the other neighbors have called the city numerous times about the issue. They’ve never been able to reach a person, but have left numerous voice mails.
“We’ve been wondering what we can do and nobody’s called us back,” he says.
That is when Wilson and his neighbors put up a row of large planters to block the area. Wilson said it worked.
“We’re just kind of taking care of our own neighborhood,” he says. “This is where we live.”
But when the city found out about the planters, it sent a letter to one of the homeowners, saying they had 30 days to remove the planters, or face a fine of up to $1,000 a day.
“We want to work with them and understand the concern and see if that’s the right solution or not,” says Dylan Rivera with the Portland Bureau of Transportation. But “limiting public access to a public street is really unacceptable.”
Neighbors have also complained about maintenance and occasional homeless campers. Rivera tells KOIN 6 News the city did respond to a homeless issue on June 20. Wilson says, not so.
“We have neighbors that were home, I was only gone 3 hours that day,” he says. “There’s nothing to clean, we’ve already cleaned it and nobody showed up here to clean anything.”
Rivera says the city is willing to give people on the street more time to work out a solution with the city. He says people who find themselves in similar situations shouldn’t take matters into their own hands, instead, they should call 503.823.1700.