Home repair grants help Portlanders stay in beloved houses

It was 1991 and Sarah Moon stood in the entryway of the house that would soon become her home. The orange shag carpet had to go. So would that terrible drop ceiling. But the small Mount Tabor home, built in 1913, had potential, Moon knew. And it was just blocks from Atkinson Elementary School, which would be perfect for her young children.

More than three decades later, Moon, 67, still lives in her lovingly cared for home. But much has changed. Her children are grown. She’s divorced. And Moon, a longtime preschool teacher now working as a nanny, could no longer afford to buy a house, not even a fixer-upper, in her now well-to-do Portland neighborhood just blocks from Mt. Tabor Park.

This last fact – that even as an established homeowner, she’d have trouble finding another, comparable place to live – became starkly evident to Moon last winter when an inspection in December 2023 revealed that her nearly 30-year-old furnace was on its last legs.

A fix, she was told, would cost north of $10,000.

“There was no way I could do that,” she said. “I try to have a little savings, but $10,000 is not in the picture.”

Read the full story on The Oregonian/OregonLive.

Photo by Mark Graves.