Demolition of a house was under way Monday at 105 Columbus St. N.E.
A small old house at the corner of First Avenue and Columbus Street in Albany was vacant for five years. This week it was torn down so a manufactured house can be placed on the lot.
The house was built in 1937 and had 576 square feet, according to county tax records. The address is 105 Columbus St. N.E.
It’s an address I pass often because my bike rides along the Albany riverfront often go this far east on First Avenue in the Willamette Neighborhood.
I first mentioned the place on this site in April 2018. The house had just been boarded up and declared uninhabitable, and the city code compliance officer had arranged for the elderly tenant to move to better quarters.
One day in August 2022, the place was swarming with police, resulting in another story. That’s because the Linn County Regional SWAT Team was using the house for a training exercise.
Now, according to a permit on file with the Albany CommunityDevelopment Department, the lot is being cleared for the placement of a new 1,404-square-foot manufactured home.
Two other manufactured houses have been placed nearby in recent months. Looks like this corner of Albany, close to the BNSF and Union Pacific railroad tracks, is showing some growth. (hh)
I got off the bike to take a couple of photos of the demolition Monday.
Careful before you get a camera ticket for parking by a hydrant.
Our family home is 2 houses from this. It is very awesome the county and city are cleaning up and improving this neighborhood. It has been a long time coming and glad it won’t continue to be where all addicts are segregated to. So Thank you.
Wonder who owns the home and wonder who will live in it. That’s a nice location.
Why didn’t the city help the elderly person stay in their home. Why did they leave them to live in a home until it was so bad that it had to be declared “condemned” and taken by the city. Where is the better quarters? The homeless shelter perhaps. I know many elderly people that have lost their homes and are left in shelters. It is a win-win for the city. The city gets the poor persons home then more funding for the homeless people they created.
The version that the city provides is not usually the truth. They are fairytale lies to make it an altruistic story of compassion on their part. In old fairytales that are based on true stories, there was an unpleasant seam of inequality. In one story, the ”hero” tortures a man by making him dance on thorns until he’s torn and bleeding as punishment for some imagined sins. When the man cries for help, the judge sides with his torturer, and the man is hanged as a thief. These fairytales were criticized for being stories that were unsuitable for children. In response, they revised some of the stories to soften their rough edges. The later editions published were re-edited stories deemed suitable for kiddos. Some of us “kiddos” do not appreciate being mislead when we know the reality.