A Portland lawsuit shines a light on how urban improvement projects and construction of the nation’s highways often came at the cost of neighborhoods that aren’t predominantly white.
Elizabeth Fouther-Branch and Bobby Fouther as children standing in front of their great-aunt’s home and in 2021 standing in the front of the parking lot where the house used to stand in Portland, Ore.Dec. 11, 2022, 3:54 PM UTCA home that was a fixture of Bobby Fouther’s childhood is now a parking lot, the two-story, shingle-sided house having been demolished in the 1970s along with many other properties in a predominantly Black neighborhood of Portland, Oregon.
But even after buying homes and building lives in Albina, residents were forced to move by so-called urban renewal and highway building. A first phase, in the 1950s and ’60s, involved city officials secretly agreeing to compensate the hospital for the full cost of the purchases and demolitions, the lawsuit said. The homeowners were intimidated by hospital representatives and told that if they didn’t leave, the city would take their homes. They were not fairly compensated and in some cases not compensated at all, according to the lawsuit.
“I was taken out of my safe and loving community. I was moved into a neighborhood that saw me as a nuisance and to a school where I was one of three Black children,” said Connie Mack, one of the plaintiffs.
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