Parasite of the Month

Craig Marquardo is our Parasite of the Month due to his handling of events regarding a tenant’s union. Craig is a VP of VCS Property Management located at 5550 S. Macadam Dr Suite 230, Portland, OR 97239.​​​​​​​

Craig has lived a long life conning people with experiences such as running the “Portland Music Awards” where Willamette Week did an investigative interview. In it, he made claims of singing back up for Sting from the band “The Police”, helped directed the movie “Die Hard 2”, claims of receiving the purple heart, or who can forget the time where back in 2019 he lied about founding a nonprofit for an ice cream social? And when the Department of Justice did a investigation on him and found him liable for grand total of $14,619.67, Craig switched his career path to spending his days conning and lying to tenants for the Landlords who contract his time.

When the tenants of 39th Place organized to fight together, the landlord decided to switch property management in a desperate attempt to subdue the Tenant Union’s Solidarity and brought in Craig and VCS Property Management. Craig has made it known to the Tenant Union that he does not recognize them, and takes every opportunity to belittle them.

Here is an email that Craig sent to the Tenant Union when they first began fighting for basic utilities;

” First, I would like to say that while I appreciate your creativity, as management, we will work with tenants on a one-on-one basis. So this will be the one and only time VCS or ownership will ever respond to this email, or anyone else identifying themselves as an unnamed faceless part of a tenant union.

Lastly, I would caution you to refrain from making any ‘demands’ or trying to impose timelines on your wants, as that is counter-productive to a positive relationship. I would hope that we can have a more healthy and productive means of solving problems. Let your ‘group’ know that they are welcome to submit maintenance requests on their individual portals, and can send emails to us from there as well.

While tenant unions are legal, we are also not legally required to work with them. We are happy to work with each of our individual tenants, whom we openly recognize have compounded interests. Any individual request will be taken care of in a respectful and timely manner.

You can respond here if you wish, but this will be the last time you will hear from anyone on this email chain. So please take no offense for the lack of response from here forward.”

While Craig gave empty promises of requests that would be done in a timely manner, he has not followed through. Making some Tenants wait more than a week on basic utility management requests like poorly sealed doors and windows. He didn’t even give Tenants a notice when telling maintenance workers to enter their property. And these workers, lied too about the tenants getting timely warning, ended up using ladders to enter Tenants Patio’s to power wash them. A superficial, and unnecessary “maintenance” that, in the words of an interviewed tenant, “paints over the real issue.” 

After the tenant’s complained, Craig sent out a notice a day later for the power washing to cover their tracks retroactively. Because the Tenants weren’t given notice, VCS Property Management ended up destroying personal property and illegally entered into tenant’s residences. The water has gotten into tenant’s poorly sealed doors, and even destroyed some pieces of mail. The Tenant union has attempted to communicate with VCS and have been told that they refuse to comment, apologize, or stop. It was also heavily implied that they will never give heads up before any big projects, nor respect the Tenant’s autonomy.