No love for management at Lovejoy Station Apartments

Frustrated residents form a tenant's union at Lovejoy Station

Ty Young on his patio at the Lovejoy Station Apartments in the Pearl District. He and others there are fed up with the building’s management company. Photos by Michaela Lowthian

Since 2018, Ty Young and his wife, Silver, have lived here in a fifth-floor unit at the Pearl’s Lovejoy Station Apartments. Their cozy flat is filled with personal touches, like flower boxes, jigsaw puzzles and plastic flamingos. A bubble machine mounted on a patio railing “sends something good into the world,” Young said.

“I have a lot of health stuff,” the boyish-looking 70-year-old said.

Young grew up on a cattle ranch in Bend, but these days can only walk short distances inside his apartment. He uses a an electric wheelchair he calls the BatMobile for trips outside.

Getting in and out of his apartment building is far harder than it should be.

ADA buttons on the main doors were left unfixed for months at a time. Only one of the elevators has easy push-buttons, and that elevator was recently was out of service for 12 weeks. Eventually, a fire alarm defect was cited as the reason.

There is no ADA button at all on a Northwest Marshall Street door connected to the garage, forcing Young to stretch his arm and prop open a very heavy door with an injured leg in order to exit.

But today is a day he looks forward to: A Trimet Lift van will take him and Silver to WinCo on Southeast 82nd Avenue for their monthly shopping trip. Afterwards, they go to Kentucky Fried Chicken for dinner.

“That’s our big treat for the month,” said Silver, 76, who stockpiles food from the William Temple House pantry and Lift Urban Portland for the rest of their meals.

A U.S. Army veteran, Silver is covered by the Veterans Administration hospital for her healthcare, but Ty’s co-pays are a burden. They recently lost their Section 8 designation, boosting the rent for their one-bedroom apartment to $1,284.

“I refused to pay the extra for a few months,” said Young.

The 181-unit Lovejoy Station is a HomeForward building, as is the nearby Pearl Court and The Yards. HomeForward contracts day-to-day management to Beaverton-based Pinehurst Property Management. The Youngs and many of their neighbors say Pinehurst’s on-site manager is hostile to repair requests and withholds information.

“We have a 100% adversarial relationship with management,” said Silver. “They lie to us about everything. You can’t trust what they say.”

Ty and his dog, Sunny, exiting a door with no ADA button at the Lovejoy Station Apartments

On a trip down to the garage, we meet a worker in a Hazmat suit. Ty said this work has been going on about three weeks, but that no one from management has explained to residents what’s going on. The worker told us he’s repairing water damage in the walls.

Recently, the hallway carpets were cleaned for the first time since they they moved in. A side entrance on Lovejoy Street has been breached many times.

“They’re just jerking it and breaking it open then living in the stairwells. They’ve found feces and cigarette butts there,” Silver said.

“It didn’t use to be this way,” she said, reflecting on the neighborhood’s decline since moving in eight years ago.

In spite of everything, Ty loves where he lives and being close to the streetcar and his doctors’ offices.

“We love our apartment and we want to stay,” he said. “Bad management is the problem. One of the guys in the office is a good guy, but he can only do so much. We need someone who cares. We have some awesome neighbors here.”

In a Feb. 22 email, the Lovejoy Station Tenants Union notified Pinehurst Property Management and Home Forward of its formation. The email detailed the many violations of ADA policy. They have yet to receive a reply.