26 Black descendants of families displaced from Portland’s Albina district file civil rights suit against city, Legacy Emanuel hospital – By Maxine Bernstein (The Oregonian/OregonLive) / Dec 8, 2022
Twenty-six Black descendants of families whose homes in Portland’s Albina district were destroyed in the 1960s and 1970s filed a federal lawsuit Thursday against the city, the entity formerly known as the Portland Development Commission and Legacy Emanuel Hospital, alleging they conspired to violate the families’ civil rights.
“This horribly racist chapter from Portland’s past has not closed, causing plaintiffs continuing harm in the form of an ongoing public nuisance,” the suit says. “The unjust enrichment of defendants, flowing directly from the destruction of plaintiffs’ former neighborhood, continues to this day and will continue into the future unless abated.”
The suit alleges all three defendants acted together to destroy the predominantly Black community and displace hundreds of families from their homes and businesses in the central Albina neighborhood, under the guise of urban renewal.
Homeowners were forced to sell their houses for a planned Emanuel Hospital expansion. But much of the land the hospital acquired through the defendants’ actions has languished, empty and unused, creating real blight to this day, the suit states.
