Willamette Week | By Anthony Effinger | October 19, 2023
Danielle Parham was at home with her three children at the Rockwood Station apartments in Gresham when, at about 10 pm on April 18, they heard drilling at their front door.
In a legal complaint over the matter, Parham says she told her daughter to lock herself in the bathroom. She told her son to take her youngest child into the living room and to call 911. She grabbed her handgun, loaded it, and aimed at the door, expecting a home invasion.
Instead, someone was trying to board up her door, Parham says in her complaint.
Rockwood Station, a complex of 195 units at the corner of East Burnside Street and 191st Avenue, is owned by Home Forward, the public corporation that administers federal housing programs in Multnomah County. It owns or manages 111 properties containing 6,727 units. Parham sued Home Forward in Multnomah County Circuit Court last month, saying the incident caused her emotional distress, disruptions of her personal life, and interference with her cancer treatment.
“It’s a horrible case of negligence by Home Forward,” Michael Fuller, Parham’s attorney, tells WW. “They get a lot of taxpayer money. This is another hard-to-believe error by them. Why were they boarding up an apartment at 10 at night?”
So far, Home Forward hasn’t apologized for the incident or explained why they tried to board up Parham’s unit that night, Fuller says.
Spokeswoman Ariane Le Chevallier said the agency had no comment. “Home Forward does not comment on pending litigation,” Le Chevallier wrote in an email.
Home Forward, which expects to receive $170 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development this year, according to its 2023 budget, is paying a lawyer from Stoel Rives to handle the case, at least for now. Its legal counsel may change because Home Forward plans to ask either its insurance company or the manager of Rockwood Station to handle the defense, Stoel Rives lawyer Stephen Galloway said in a letter to Fuller’s firm, OlsonDaines.
“Because the property at issue was fully managed by a third-party property management company, defendant plans to tender this defense either to its insurer or to the property manager,” Galloway wrote. “In either event, it is likely that different counsel will be retained.”
Rockwood Station was managed by Quantum Residential Inc. until July 1, when Key Property Services Inc. took over, Home Forward spokeswoman Monica Foucher said in an email.
Both firms are based in Vancouver, Wash.
