The Oregonian | By Nicole Hayden and Zane Sparling | May 19, 2023
Nick Wolf lost everything, including photos and jewelry belonging to his late mother, in a fire that destroyed The May apartments near downtown Portland on Tuesday, leaving the building unsavable and partially collapsed.
For the second time in a decade, the 34-year-old is now starting over.
“Ten years ago, when I was in my early 20s, I struggled with addiction and homelessness,” he told The Oregonian/OregonLive. “I’m certainly fearful that this catastrophe might wipe away all the positive progress I’ve made since.”
Firefighters evacuated more than a dozen people and at least two dogs after the blaze started around 10 a.m. Tuesday. Its cause is unknown at this time, but the blaze appears to have started on the third floor of the Goose Hollow apartment building and jumped to the fourth, fire officials said. There were multiple explosions throughout the 42-unit building. Fire investigators said they were aware of rumors floating around about the cause of the fire, including that it could be arson, but said they “can’t confirm anything right now.”
Wolf isn’t the only resident who was living at The May, located at 1410 S.W. Taylor Street, who was formerly unhoused.
Julie Showers, spokesperson for homelessness nonprofit Blanchet House, said there were at least two prior Blanchet House shelter residents living at the apartment on the day of the fire. Two others had also resided there but “luckily” moved out recently, she said. It is not clear how many other residents were formerly homeless. Wolf wasn’t one of the Blanchet House residents.
“Over the years we’ve had many residents move to The May because it was lower barrier, meaning they were accepting of low credit scores and imperfect background checks,” Showers said. Blanchet House does not partner with The May; it just so happened to be one of the buildings some of their former shelter residents could afford on their own, Showers said. Wolf said he paid $890 monthly for a studio.
Wolf said the building served an important function in the community, “offering housing for people that couldn’t afford the more expensive apartments in the area.” He said many people worked “very, very hard” to live there. The building was home to formerly houseless individuals, disabled residents and seniors on fixed incomes, he said.
“This is just about the worst thing that could have happened to most of them, and we now essentially have additional people who are homeless in our community,” said Wolf, who is currently staying at the temporary Red Cross shelter erected for fire victims. He said several dozen other former May residents are there too.
One of the former Blanchet House residents, John Judge, filed a lawsuit against The May Friday.
Attorney Michael Fuller filed the suit in Multnomah County Circuit Court seeking $125,000 from The May’s owner for the loss of Judge’s possessions, emotional distress and the head injury Judge said he suffered after he tripped on a firehose on his way out. Valerie King, the wife of The May’s owner, said they had no comment on the litigation.
Judge lost items that once belong to his late mother and father, who both died during the pandemic. He lost his mother’s family Bible and wedding ring, a watch worn by his father while serving in Vietnam and family photographs dating back to the 1800s. While he expects to enter veterans housing offered by Portland homelessness nonprofit Transition Projects on Monday, it will likely take Judge much longer to move on from the trauma.
“It was the most horrible experience in my life,” he said. “All I have is the clothes on my back.”
Blanchet House director Scott Kerman worries about the psychological toll on residents. After doing the painstaking work to achieve housing only to lose it again, Kerman hopes that residents from The May don’t lose hope. And he hopes in addition to housing services, that there will be mental health resources made available to help residents cope with the trauma.
Wolf doesn’t yet know where he will live next, though the Blanchet House men’s shelter could be an option. He was told housing workers would visit the Red Cross shelter to help people navigate next steps, but he hasn’t seen them yet.
The fire highlights the challenges that low-income residents face in maintaining housing, Kerman said. A catastrophe such as a fire can more easily destroy someone living on fixed income and the psychological toll is likely to hit harder than for those who have a financial cushion to fall back on, he said.
The owner of The May had numerous hazardous condition code violations that he recently fixed, according to city inspectors who reviewed the repairs a day before flames devoured the building. The May is one of a dozen buildings owned by Larry D. Kelley, 72, through his company, SkyNat Property Management, business records show.
City staff found 10 code violations during a Dec. 15 inspection. The building didn’t have functioning emergency lights on the second and third floors and a series of “daisy-chained” extension cords were found in the main lobby, the case files show. The review also found damage to fire-resistant ceiling covers in the basement laundry room and a fire door that had been propped open on the fourth floor.
Fire inspectors visited the building the day before the fire and found that most of the violations had been rectified, though investigators noted that a different fire door was wedged open, an expired fire extinguisher in the basement hadn’t yet been replaced and another fire extinguisher on the fourth floor was missing a tool to break its glass enclosure.
Wolf, who lived on the fourth floor, said more could have been done to protect residents in the building.
“I really feel like the management company tremendously neglected us,” Wolf said. “We certainly know the fire department had red flagged us in December, but we also didn’t have any management on site for the past month.”
Kelley and building managers did not respond to requests for comment.
Wolf said someone began repeatedly pulling the fire alarm at The May in December. He estimated it happened at least 20 times since then, at times going off at 4 a.m. or around 2 p.m. when he was on virtual meetings working from home. Other residents also said the fire alarm was repeatedly pulled. Portland Fire & Rescue responded to 24 fire alarms at the building from November through mid-May, according to Lt. Laurent Picard.
“It got to the point where the fire department would take a little longer each time to show up with a truck to shut off the alarm and people stopped leaving the building when the alarm would go off and wouldn’t respond since they just assumed it was a false alarm,” he said. “Pulling the fire alarm is illegal and it was happening for five months, and they didn’t do anything about the issue.”
Initiating a false alarm that is transmitted to a fire department is a misdemeanor in Oregon.
