The Northwest is Lit
Last month a rent-subsidized 110 year-old Portland apartment building was gutted when a resident scheduled for eviction that day lit a fire.
Twitter account @PDXReal broke the story.
Garrett Repp had been harassing his neighbors, particularly the women in his building, and repeatedly pulling the fire alarm, perhaps to inure residents to it. He allegedly created his own escape suite before starting the fire.
Garrett A. Repp was arrested Thursday evening on 31 charges, including multiple counts of first-degree arson, reckless endangerment and first-degree criminal mischief in the fire at The May apartments in the city’s Goose Hollow neighborhood…
Portland Police spokesperson Sgt. Kevin Allen said Repp, 30, was arrested the day of the blaze because building management had reported him on May 9 for “breaking through the wall of his apartment” and tunneling into the vacant unit next door. Repp was charged with one count of first-degree criminal mischief and released later on May 16. The case has since been closed.
No one was seriously injured during the inferno, but the flames displaced the residents of all 42 units and killed an unknown number of pets. The building likely will be torn down.
He was under a restraining order for allegedly stalking and pulling an incubus on an ex girlfriend who lived a few blocks away.
Repp was well-known to residents at The May apartments, according to interviews with three tenants, who said he had pulled the fire alarm for no reason more than a dozen times since he moved in last November and had chased female tenants with a sword or banged on their doors…
John Judge, a resident at The May, said he frequently saw Repp sitting on the front stoop smoking, with a “crazy look in his eye.”
In Portland this is called blending in.
Repp was one of many in Portland with mental health and drug problems living in subsidized housing (which is likely paid by disability benefits). His building seems to have been merely rent-subsidized by income, either the entire building or some number of required units, putting him in the same building with younger Portlanders paying exorbitant rent for the converted studios in the aging building. At the other end of the subsidy spectrum are transitional and longer term housing for the homeless, Permanent Supportive Housing, with services for them in the building and assigned case workers for residents. Rents subsidized as much as 60% can still be expensive here, and the chronically homeless who are managing to meet them have to be relying on income subsidized by disability payments. The building of these buildings of course also has to be subsidized, through a labyrinthian process of multiple funding sources, and a massive affordable housing bond passed by voters in 2016 has only produced two building so far.
The management of these properties isn’t always the best.
Judge said it was unclear why Repp was never arrested for allegedly pulling the alarm or harassing other tenants.
Rachel Elkins, a spokesperson for the building’s owner, SkyNat Property Management, said the company was not commenting on the matter at the direction of their attorney.
SkyNat filed an eviction order against Repp on Feb. 14, alleging he owed $3,400 in back rent and late fees. Repp failed to appear in court to challenge the allegation, records show, and on May 10 a judge ordered sheriff’s deputies to remove him from his third-floor apartment.
Later the building was looted. Skynat referred residents to their insurance companies.
“As I understand, everything is lost from my particular unit,” Ehrett said. “The only form of communication from them in the 3+ weeks was an email with no subject line, saying ‘You can list suspected arson in the cause for your renter’s insurance.’”
When I attempted to take a photo of the burnt-out building from behind the police tape a cop shooed me away. What about the occupied homeless tents inside the tape, I asked. He just gave me a look.
Calls to Portland Fire and Rescue have risen with the homeless population. The city only started tracking homeless camp fires in 2019; they’ve doubled since then.
Fires have risen along with homelessness. Portland’s free weekly Willamette Week has been filling the vast space between progressive hysterics and moderate liberalism in Portland (their competition The Mercury, its more vociferous and progressive competitor, recently had to abandon its print edition) and has been doing actual journalism. They reported on homeless camp fires in
…[n]early half of all fires in Portland now start in or near houseless camps—at least 2,048 last year, according to Portland Fire & Rescue data. It’s a remarkable number, given how five years ago, fires among unhoused Portlanders were hardly a blip.
Today, there are an average of six a day.
If you move about much in Portland you typically see or smell small fires often. The fires, stemming from things like makeshift heating arrangements, smoking addicts leaving lit propane torches about as they pass out and sometimes arson committed by other homeless, occasionally create larger problems. When the fire department had to sledgehammer their way through a concrete wall to rescue homeless from a fire they had started under Portland’s Steel Bridge, a vertical-lift drawbridge built in 1915, they found a little cave network that required shutting the bridge down while the dirt was filled back in to restore the structural integrity.
untethered 
Thanks Dale. Great reporting that we’d otherwise hear about. We used to visit Portland regularly, but alas it has been off our list for at least 10 years now. Very sad fate for a once wonderful city.
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