Portland activists block eviction
Portland activists block eviction
By Johnnie Lewis posted on December 15, 2020
Dec. 14 — The Kinney family — owners of the now internationally famous “Red House on Mississippi” — is the last Black-Indigenous family in their neighborhood. They have been fighting foreclosure, and now eviction, since 2018.
The house, purchased in 1955, is in the Albina district — a collection of neighborhoods in the only sections of Portland where Black people were allowed to own property for most of the 20th century. The district, home to the majority of the city’s Black population, has long been under attack by developers and gentrifiers and targeted for so-called urban renewal — actually, removal. This once vibrant Black community has been destroyed.