PORTLAND, Ore. -- Roughly 90 broken down, burned out and seemingly undriveable RVs sat in the Portland Police Bureau’s evidence lot in industrial Northwest Portland Thursday night.
A biohazard crew member called out to his teammate, that he’d just found a family of rats inside a new arrival. These were the RVs, being towed from Portland city streets.
“It's like a faucet that's stuck on 'on,'” said Ty Routley, manager of the bureau’s property evidence division. “And as soon as you think you get caught up, then more keep pouring in.”
In the last six to seven months, Routley said close to 200 RVs had been towed into the lot, which used to house the set of the TV show Grimm.
Photos: RVs in PPB evidence lot
Some of these RVs have caught fire. Some are in pieces. Most, said Routley, were abandoned when they were towed, though many have possessions inside.
“Until the bureau actually started getting involved in actually solving it or dealing with it, and we started towing them, we didn’t realize how big of an issue it was,” he said.
Currently the city is paying to recycle two per day, at the most, said Routley.
Officials have estimated that costs roughly $1,000 per RV. But he points out, a lot of these RVs are reclaimed by their legal owners and driven away.
That said, they can no longer legally be sold.
The city council on Wednesday passed a new ordinance that bans the sale or giving away of RVs that, specifically, have leaking or damaged sewer lines.
Given the cost of scrapping such a vehicle, officials are also hosting a ‘Free RV Disposal Day’ on Sunday, October 29th.