PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Karrie Sundbom understands that progress happens. She’s OK with the city doing things differently. What she wasn’t happy with was getting only 10 days notice her address was changing.

Sundbom isn’t moving. The city is just re-numbering the houses on her street, SW 51st. Newly split lots forced the city to re-number the houses to accommodated the new houses going in. But some of those houses, like Sundbom’s, have been there for nearly 70 years.

She’s lived at the house for 18 years and when she got the notice from the city, “it looked like nothing urgent. There was no marking on it,” she told KOIN 6 News.

But when she did read it, she said she “had to read it 3 times.”

Infill — that is, new homes — are coming to the block. Because of the way existing homes are already consecutively numbered, there’s no room for new addresses.

So the city gave Sundbom 10 days to get all her affairs in order.

“I think the funniest part is the city has asked us to accomplish this in 10 days,” she said. “What have they ever done that someone has asked them to do in 10 days?”

The city code allows the Portland Fire Marshal to make this kind of change. It’s a safety issue. Firefighters need to be able to go to an exact address in an emergency.

Sundbom understands that. It’s the short notice and lack of response when she called that she doesn’t understand.

“It was more about the timeline and the flippant way, flippant nature it was handled,” she said.

Portland’s Bureau of Development Services said the address change is necessary because the street was misnumbered years and years ago. The city is supposed to leave room for growth.

But the bureau said giving Sundbom only 10 days notice was a mistake and they will give her until October 1 for the changes to take effect.

Bureau officials also said the help lines in the future will go directly to a live staffer and not voice mail. They will also look into paying homeowners an inconvenience fee for things like new address plaques and mailers to send to friends and family, a suggestion Sundbom made.

What happened to Sundbom is not an everyday event. In the past year, only 8 homes have had to change addresses — and 2 of them are on SW 51st.