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By Jeff Duewel Grants Pass Daily Courier February 01. 2016 1:37PM Low-income renters face loss of apartments Kelly Bascos, right, and her son, Hayden, were lucky to find a place a few blocks away, after 15 tenants at an apartment complex at 704 N.W. Eighth St. in Grants Pass were recently given notice to leave to make way for clients in the OnTrack substance recovery program. Bascos' mother, Shelly Watkins, center, helped them move out last Saturday. JEFF DUEWEL / Daily Courier GRANTS PASS — Brittany Bascos and her son, Hayden, marched up and down the stairs and loaded belongings into a small car on a recent gray Saturday, preparing to move to a new apartment a few blocks away. They are the lucky ones, Bascos said, of she and her neighbors at the Brookside Apartments, a low-income housing complex at the corner of Northeast Eighth and A streets near Grants Pass High School. Nobody else has been able to find anything, three weeks after eviction notices were placed on the doors of the 15 units at Brookside. Tenants of more than a year got two months notice, the rest one month, as the law requires. "It occurred to me, this is how people become homeless," said Charlene Burgess, a 25-year resident at the apartments. Laurene Lange, a resident of over a year, said she gets stressed out easily, and when asked how the search was going for new living space, said "It isn't." "I don't have a car, a computer or a cellphone," she said. It's a conundrum — the mostly low-income tenants are being thrust into a near-void of rentals in the middle of winter. Yet it's for a good cause, as the apartments will be used to house recovering drug and alcohol patients through the OnTrack program. OnTrack officials say they will work with the displaced tenants to find them new homes and will not leave them homeless. That may be easier said than done. The rental crunch has been building since the economic bubble burst in 2008, leading to foreclosures and more people searching for rentals. While skyrocketing housing prices in Portland have gotten all the headlines, the crunch has not bypassed rural communities such as Grants Pass. Far from it. "I've been doing this for 35 years, and I've never seen a rental market like it is now," said Pam Hurlburt, principal broker for 221 Property Services. None — that's right, zero — of her company's 550 rentals are vacant, Hurlburt said. "People know there's nothing available, and they're staying put," she said. A recent survey by the Southern Oregon Rental Owners Association, using mostly Jackson County information, showed 5,135 units with 113 vacancies, a 2.2 percent vacancy rate. Most landlords feel like a 5 percent vacancy rate is a good rental market. The current situation has would-be tenants scrambling and suffering. "There's nothing out there, and what you do find is very expensive," said Craig Horton of Medford Better Housing. CPM Properties, which managed the apartments purchased by OnTrack, has just three openings among its 180 units, a company spokesperson said. All the more reason for OnTrack to want more housing. OnTrack officials say they've been looking for residences for Grants Pass clients, and are thrilled to be purchasing Brookside, despite some significant renovation ahead, including foundation work for some of the units being undermined by Skunk Creek. They will be the first such residences for the program in Grants Pass, said Shirley Wilkes, housing coordinator for OnTrack, which has had a local office and treatment facility the last 10 years, currently at 806 N.W. Sixth St. OnTrack has multiple residences in Medford, where the agency is based, but Brookside will be its first in Grants Pass, Wilkes said. "This has been an ongoing need, and we're going to be really happy to provide this," Wilkes said. "The whole point is to help (clients) maintain their sobriety so they can be good citizens. "Once they get out of treatment, we don't want to just cast them out and say, 'sink or swim.' " That doesn't take the sting away for tenants of the apartments. "It's very uprooting. It was our home," said Jackie York, a five-year tenant with two teenage sons at home. "Everybody's been looking every day. We're trying to get the same places. They're knocking us out into the community. It's not fair. "Why couldn't they let us know about this ahead of time, like in the summer, to be ready, instead of slapping you with 60 days?" Rita Sullivan, OnTrack's executive director, said the agency will help the displaced tenants. "There's no way we're going to throw them out," said Sullivan. "We'll work with them and help them find a place. If it takes another week or month, we're not going to displace anyone." But tenants are skeptical of a happy ending. Sheri Porzio gets $483 a month from the Housing Urban Development agency. She was miffed about finding an eviction notice on the door, rather than a knock or a phone call. "There's not even storage units to rent," she said. "If nobody can find a place in time, nobody is even going to have a place to put their stuff." http://www.mailtribune.com/article/20160201/NEWS/160209970 © 2016 Copyright © 1995-2011 Crain Communications Inc. All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use Privacy Statement -->