PORTLAND, Oregon — Residents in a Southwest Portland neighborhood haven't had mail delivery in nearly two months after someone allegedly broke into their community mailbox.
They've been waiting on the U.S. Postal Service to fix it — but now there are new questions about who is responsible for the repair.
The community mailbox in question doesn’t look that bad, in fact the worst of the damage is to the single “outgoing” mailbox, and it appears all the neighbor’s incoming mailboxes are intact.
“It's right in there you can see where the little ledge is stuck out, they just took a little crowbar and just pulled it right off,” said Iain Rooney.
But the mail is not being delivered here, because the Postal Service said it cannot deliver to any compromised mailbox, per federal policy.
Iain’s wife Kathryn is frustrated. For the past two months they've had to go to their local branch several miles away to pick up their mail.
“I don't care how they do it, I just want it fixed. So that we can get our mail here again," said Kathryn. "We have to go to the post office, however often you want to go. But you have to stand there for ten minutes and it's a 10-minute drive, so it takes about a half hour out of your day,” she said.
Now add to the frustration: Confusion over who is supposed to fix the box. More than one neighbor reports being told by personnel at the Multnomah Post Office that the repair was on the list, but USPS is way backed up on repairs.
“Incidentally when I was at the post office and spoke to them, they said they've got a list of about dozen boxes that had the same situation,” said Iain.
That flies in the face of what we were told by a USPS spokesperson out of Seattle who wrote in part:
"Unfortunately, the mailboxes in question are not owned, and were not installed, by the postal service. Instead, they are owned by the neighborhood HOA/community organization and are the responsibility of the governing organization to repair or replace them as needed."
If this is a breakdown in communications, neighbors in this quiet court have been waiting since early June, only to hear something different now.