PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — This Christmas season is not filled with hope for an elderly woman in Gresham who is being evicted because of an issue that’s coming up a lot in the Portland metro area.
At nearly 80 years old, Donna Spicer has had a tough year and life.
Her immediate problem is packing up all the photos of her daughter and son. Those, along with everything else she owns, must be moved out of the apartment she has called home for the last 30 years after she received a notice of termination without cause. The deadline is New Year’s Eve.
“All of these things are in the old house, this is where my memories are,” Spicer told KOIN 6 News. “I just wanted to get one more Christmas here.”
Some might wonder why she wants to stay after just 2 doors down, the 9-year-old boy who used to come to her door for candy was shot multiple times, along with his mother. They survived, but the boy lost an eye.
“It’s not the greatest place in the world to live, but it’s been my home for so long I don’t know anything else,” she said.
Spicer clips articles from the paper, some detailing tragedies affecting her own life, others with information about the possibility that she might be able to stay in her home.
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News earlier this year about legislators passing protections for people facing no-cause evictions gave her hope — but the legislation didn’t come to a final vote in Salem. There’s a new law in Portland that requires landlords to pay some of the moving costs when they kick someone out without cause, but Spicer doesn’t live in Portland.
Spicer’s landlords, who are legally entitled to kick her out, declined to be interviewed for this story.
She has tried to get in touch with services for seniors, but said, “It’s all messages and then hopefully you’re sitting by your phone when they call.”
Laura Golino de Lovato is on the front lines of the housing crisis with the Northwest Pilot Project, an organization dedicated to helping low-income seniors in Multnomah County find emergency housing.
“It really is a crisis,” she said. “We get 80 calls a week.”
She said there’s a deficit of 25,000 housing units for the poor in Multnomah County and finding something for Spicer on short notice will be tough.
“We will do whatever we can do to find something and it will likely be temporary,” she said.
Temporary is better than nothing when you have no family to fall back on like Spicer. Her daughter, Debbie, was murdered in 1989. Her son, Scott, was shot by his ex-girlfriend’s boyfriend, within 9 years of Debbie’s death.
“I wish they were here,” Spicer said. “That’s what I think about. I’d at least have 3 or 4 grandchildren, and they’d probably be married and give me great-grandchildren. So I don’t have any of that and now I have to get thrown out of here.”
Northwest Pilot Project is hopeful to find Spicer somewhere to go, but it will likely be a small temporary unit, where she has to go down the hall to a shared bathroom. She may even have to relocate to another county where she can afford rent on her small Social Security.
