Reclamation Toward the Futurity of Central Albina

DREAMWORLD URBANISM

Overview

In recent years, the City of Portland has announced a number of new programs and initiatives aimed at moving the city, with a sordid history of racist violence and exclusion, toward greater racial equity. “Urban Renewal” in Portland has a particularly ugly history of racialized neighborhood destruction which has been discussed in a number of studies, reports, and documentaries. But the history is alive in the present. There are many people today who still remember the neighborhoods that were unjustly taken from them, and even more descendants of the displaced who have grown up hearing stories about these thriving communities, such as Central Albina, as they were before the bulldozers arrived.

Emanuel Hospital Expansion Project City Wide Context

Beginning in the early 1960s and into the 1970s, Emanuel Hospital (now Legacy Emanuel) and the Portland Development Commission (PDC, now Prosper Portland), acquired and demolished roughly 55.3 acres of vibrant neighborhood development in Central Albina, the heart of Portland's Black community, in order to clear the path for a planned hospital expansion. Together, the City and hospital destroyed close to 300 homes and a number of businesses.

Many Black residents throughout the area resisted, forming the Emanuel Displaced Persons Association to demand just compensation and relocation aid. Their efforts resulted in the drafting of a Replacement Housing Agreement, but the replacement housing never came. Then, when the process for acquiring Federal funding for the project faltered, the hospital abandoned its plans for the expansion and left much of the area vacant for decades.

The Emanuel Displaced Persons Association 2 (EDPA2) is an ad hoc community organization made up of survivors and descendants of those whose homes were taken and demolished, and whose community, thriving and supportive, was fragmented. For members of EDPA2, the City’s policies for racial justice appear hollow in the absence of any real reckoning with and restitution for the harm that was done.

It is not our intention to rewrite the story of Black people in Portland, or the people of Albina, or the long history of displacement activities enacted by the federal, state and local government. Many great  planners ,  community members ,  students  and  researchers  have already gone to great lengths to document the experience and lives of Black Portlanders, the residents and planners of the Central Albina area as we know it today.

Instead, the research, maps, and data that follow are intended to attest to the deep and lasting impacts of forced removal from the Emanuel Hospital Project’s expansion area in the heart of Central Albina. We hope it may serve as a resource for EDPA2 and others seeking just restitution for those harms.


Overhead glimpse

The following Aerial Image Series displays how the Portland Development Commission and Emanuel Hospital systematically demolished this formerly active, vibrant neighborhood, replacing it with vacant lots and pavement.

Timeline

The following timeline details the long chain of policies, running from 1857 to today, that have shaped the landscape of institutional racism in Portland, with a particular focus on policies influencing urban renewal and the Emanuel Hospital Project.

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Segregation and Exclusion

No story on racist planning and real estate practices is complete without a discussion of redlining. Redlining was a precondition for much of the urban renewal that followed in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. Portland's predominantly Black areas in Albina were starved of the financing needed to build ownership and wealth, and reinvest in the neighborhood. Into that void, community members stepped up to help one another. So, despite redlining and white flight from Albina, in the 1950s and 1960s, a strong community grew.

Mapping Inequality Project, University of Richmond

HOLC Redlining map, Mapping Inequality Project, University of Richmond

Urban Renewal Era

Urban renewal came as many Black households were still recovering from the catastrophic floods that sent a huge wave of Black Vanport refugees into the Albina area. Starting in the early 1950s and continuing into the 1970s, multiple rounds of urban renewal destroyed over 1,000 homes and numerous businesses in Albina. Each of these projects had a devastating impact, but the Emanuel Hospital expansion was the coup de grâce that leveled acres of homes along with the former heart of Albina's Black business district, the Hill Block site at the corner of N Williams Avenue and N Russell.

Albina Area Urban Renewal Project Boundaries

Community

“Urban renewal” efforts like the Emanuel Hospital Expansion Project had a severe impact on those who lived in Central Albina, their homes, and their wealth-building opportunities. Demographic data tells the story of how many people lived in the area in each decade and what the racial composition of the community was over time. Our analysis, detailed in the accompanying report, demonstrates that urban renewal in Central Albina had a disproportionate effect on Black community members living there. Housing data tells the story of the number of housing units available in the area, how many owned their homes, and the racial composition of home ownership, when available. Financial data tells the story of wealth-building and wealth loss with household income, home value, and rent-to-income ratio data, as well.

Lifetimes of experiences

Community conversations for this project revealed three major themes:

  1. There was a dense fabric of support networks, institutions, entrepreneurship, and shared community in Central Albina; 
  2. The neighborhood was multi-generational, a place where generational knowledge was regularly from elder to child as it has in Black communities for centuries.
  3. Being forced out of Central Albina was traumatic, and for some, the impacts of that trauma persist, and were not always fully realized and processed until later in life.

    Incurable losses

    Incurable losses represent aspects of community well-being that cannot be restored to how they were because they were situated in the geography and relationships within a specific community at a specific time. As EDPA2 says, these elements cannot be replicated because they are part of the soul, essence, and identity of a specific geographic location, and as such these losses represent the death of a community in its former home.

    Curable losses

    The map below from the Portland Archives shows properties taken by the Portland Development Commission for the Emanuel Hospital Project. Each of these properties has an associated Property Identification File showing the location, owner, lot size, value, and other characteristics of the properties from 1969.

    PDC Map Showing Properties Taken by the City for the Emanuel Hospital Project, from the Portland Archives.

    Below, we have taken the property ID file data and put it into an interactive map format. Properties taken by the Portland Development Commission are shown in orange. For residential properties with legible property identification files, we have included a range of relevant data from the time, along with our estimate of what the properties would be worth today. Additionally, each PDC taken property is linked to its property ID file. The full methodology can be found in the report.

    Emanuel Hospital Project area with April 2021 Property Value Estimates for PDC Taken Residential Properties

    Then and Now

    A whole community was destroyed, hundred of homes and businesses leveled to make way for decades of dereliction. But this isn't ancient history. The survivors and descendants impacted by this project demand just restitution, as was agreed upon at the time of the first Emanuel Displaced Persons Association. It is far past time that they received it.

    Neighborhood change between 1960 and 2020

    There's more to the story

    The full report can be found  here .

    A table showing the estimated property values for PDC taken residential properties can be found  here .

    Watch a recorded presentation about the report and EDPA2 efforts  here 

    Reclamation Toward The Futurity of Central Albina: Dreamworld Urbanism


    Sources:

    Property Identification Files and archival photos from the Portland Archives –  https://efiles.portlandoregon.gov/Record?pagesize=200&sortBy=recCreatedOn&q=emanuel+hospital+project 

    HOLC map from  Mapping Inequality , a project of the University of Richmond.

    Demographic data from the US Census Bureau and HOLC Redlining Maps.

    Historical image sources are available on the timeline.

    Neighborhood change between 1960 and 2020