PORTLAND, Ore. — The Cumberland II manufactured home park has been home to Susan Perez for more than a decade. She will tell you she loves the sense of community.
"It's really neat to be walking up the street [saying] hi, hi," she said. "I love that."
What Perez does not love is not getting her mail. She said it has not been delivered to her mailbox in a month.
"There is something wrong with this and it's very frustrating to me," she said.
"It's unbelievable," said Teresa Walton. "It breaks your heart."
Walton is the manager of the park. She said everything was fine until mid-June when she decided to replace the decades-old community mailbox near the entrance of the park.
"The locks were broken on a lot of them or had been pried off on a lot of them," Walton said.
Walton said instead of getting one new community mailbox for the entire park they got two: One for where the old mailbox was located near the entrance of the park and a second for the lower part of the park.
"Out of 25 homes 20 of them are elderly or disabled and could no longer make it up to the upper end of the park," she said.
According to Walton, a USPS employee approved the new set up. Problem is, since this all went down, she said the mail carrier will only deliver mail to the box in the upper part of the park, not the one in the lower part of the park. Walton says about two dozen homes are not getting mail including lifesaving medication.
"There's not a night that goes by that I don't cry myself to sleep over this issue."
Walton sais she has no idea why this is happening and USPS has not given her an explanation. She is frustrated and so, too, are her neighbors.
"We hope that somebody can help us to effect a change," Perez said.
The residents of the park who are not getting their mail said they need to go to a post office more than three miles away to get it.
KGW reached out to USPS by phone and email for a comment. Ernie Swanson with USPS released the following statement:
"The mailboxes in question were moved without authorization from the U.S. Postal Service. Mail delivery will be resumed once the mailboxes are returned to their previous location," the statement said.