One day at their home, in April 2023, Rebecca Alvarez’s husband, Victor, went into sudden cardiac arrest. In the coming months at Oregon Health & Science University, Rebecca worked and lived with Victor at his bedside as he awaited organ transplants, and the couple’s four children moved in with extended family. That’s when they decided to list their Southeast Portland house on Airbnb.
The dwelling was brown, split level, three bedrooms, just off Powell Butte Nature Park. For a year, they rented out the top floor. They did not know it at the time, but Portland city workers were among those examining their listings.
The first six citations for short-term rental zoning violations, all sent by mail and issued on the same day, Nov. 6, 2024, had been returned due to a full mailbox, Alvarez says. It wasn’t until she received an email the next month about citations seven and eight that she discovered the financial peril she now faced…