‘Portland Dumpster Diver’: Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez Says She’s ‘Working Class’ and Her Father Cut Her Off in College. So Why Did He Finance Her First Home?

Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez—whose Washington swing district makes her one of the most endangered members of Congress—has repeatedly claimed she was forced to work three jobs after her father cut her off financially because she stopped going to church. She says she struggled to pay her tuition at Reed College, a prestigious private institution in Portland, Ore., and resorted to unorthodox living arrangements to avoid paying rent.

But documents reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon cast doubt on Gluesenkamp Perez's tale of woe. Her father, Jose Perez, whom she describes as a volunteer evangelical pastor in Houston, loaned Gluesenkamp Perez between $24,000 and $47,999 to help her buy her first property just two years after she graduated from Reed.

Gluesenkamp Perez and her husband leaned heavily on family support for their lives in Washougal, Wash., just across the Columbia River from Portland. A financial disclosure report she filed in 2016 during her failed run for Skamania County commissioner showed the couple had substantial help when they purchased a five-acre plot in Skamania County in 2014 for $174,000 and built a home on it a few years later. Gluesenkamp Perez indicated that she owed her father, father-in-law, and a friend named Jane Edinger—who has donated over $12,000 to the congresswoman's congressional campaigns—as much as $47,999 each for "payment and interest with cash out" for the "value of house." Gluesenkamp Perez's grandmother also helped, contributing up to $23,999, bringing the potential amount loaned to nearly $168,000.

She didn't divulge the terms of those loans—such as the interest rate and monthly payments—so it's possible they were more favorable than a traditional mortgage. During her first congressional run in 2022, Gluesenkamp Perez posted photos on social media of herself installing floorboards and operating a circular saw, writing that she "didn't have a choice" but to build her own home because "getting approved for a loan is a nightmare and as a young family it was nearly impossible." She did not mention the loan she received to buy the land.

By the time Gluesenkamp Perez filed her next financial disclosure report in 2018, her only remaining debt to the group was to her father. Flagstar Bank also replaced the original creditor, Stephanie Huntington, who sold the couple the property, with a loan of $120,000 or more.

Gluesenkamp Perez has long made her identity as a "working class Washingtonian that has been left behind in this economy" central to her campaigns. She's said that her experience "trying to build a house" was part of what pushed her to run to represent Washington's Third Congressional District.

Yet with her father's help, "working class" Gluesenkamp Perez—who graduated from one of the most elite private colleges in the Pacific Northwest—was able to buy property when she was 26, at a time when the median age for a first-time home buyer was 31. It's unclear why her father—who has an engineering degree and has worked for several tech companies including Texas Instruments—would loan her tens of thousands of dollars after cutting her off in college.

Gluesenkamp Perez told the Obama operative David Axelrod that her father cut her off when she stopped attending church services. "They're like, we're not condoning," she told him on his podcast in 2024. "We're not giving. We're not going to help pay for Reed if you're not going to church, if you're walking away from the church, like we're not going to support this." Reed, which is ranked first on the Princeton Review rankings for "the least religious students," famously has a joke motto of "Communism, Atheism, Free Love."

Gluesenkamp Perez's father did not respond to a request for comment.

Being cut off, Gluesenkamp Perez claims, forced her to work as a barista, a nanny, and in an iPhone case factory in order to pay her tuition by the credit hour and extended her college career to "like seven years."

At the same time, Gluesenkamp Perez's financial disclosures don't show any student debt. Having no debt is unusual for college graduates whose parents or grandparents didn't pay their tuition. Tuition at Reed for the 2013-2014 school year was about $46,000, not counting room and board (it has since risen to about $72,000).

It would be difficult for a young woman in her late teens and early 20s in 2010s Portland—not an inexpensive city—to earn enough doing "piece work," as she put it to Axelrod, to cover the annual tuition bill, once you account for taxes and living expenses. Indeed, when she recounts her college years, Gluesenkamp Perez does not disclose why she does not appear to be a victim of the student debt bubble frequently decried by Democrats. And one of her campaign aides told the Free Beacon that "she did not qualify for institutional need-based aid."

Regardless, Gluesenkamp Perez went to unusual lengths to avoid paying rent during college, a former roommate, Isaac Eger, said on a Jan. 29 episode of his podcast, COEXIST Inc. Eger, a left-wing writer who donated to Bernie Sanders's 2020 presidential campaign and described Glusenkamp Perez as someone he "once cared about" who turned "into something you can't understand," said she initially slept on a couch before she relocated to an attic crawl space above their garage.

Eger referred to Glusenkamp Perez as a "Portland dumpster diver" who would "literally never pay rent." She'd try to barter "rotten fruit and meat and whatever else she would find" in place of cash and "outright refuse[d] to pay for things," like bills. She accused others in the house of being "spoiled brats."

Eger also detailed Gluesenkamp Perez's bizarre behavior. He said she "started a rabbit-eating cult," breeding her pet rabbit "Meatball" and encouraging others in the house to eat its offspring.

Gluesenkamp Perez built a wood-fired stove while living in the attic, according to Eger. The landlord found out and demanded she begin paying rent and sign a lease. Instead, she moved in with her future husband, Dean Gluesenkamp, living in a converted bus parked in a Southeast Portland driveway.

Soon after she graduated with an economics degree from the prestigious private college, Gluesenkamp Perez befriended Foster Huntington—an internationally known hipster filmmaker and photographer who's widely credited with popularizing "van life." His mother, Stephanie Huntington, let her and Dean move their bus onto her land in rural Washington.

While there, the couple helped Foster Huntington build a livable treehouse—which won national media attention—with an accompanying skatebowl and hot tub. Social media posts show Gluesenkamp Perez and her husband assisting with construction, cleaning the "wood-fired hot tub", and socializing on the property. Some photos also show individuals hanging around naked.

Stephanie Huntington, the famous filmmaker's mother, ultimately sold Gluesenkamp Perez the parcel of land they were living on.

That wasn't the last time Gluesenkamp Perez got help with housing. Since 2023, she's taken advantage of a handout for members of Congress, accepting nearly $55,000 in taxpayer funds—on top of her $174,000 salary—to cover rent for what she calls her Washington, D.C., "rathole apartment."

She's also gotten help from her family on her campaigns. Her mother contributed $2,000 in 2022, while Dean's parents and brother collectively gave more than $3,600.

Gluesenkamp Perez has still struggled to pay her property taxes on time, even with all the help she's received for housing. She was at least six months late paying her 2022 property taxes on the Portland, Ore., auto shop she owns with her husband. While delinquent, Gluesenkamp Perez claimed she "paid more in taxes than Jeff Bezos, the second-richest person in the country" (when Bezos, Gluesenkamp Perez's fellow Washingtonian, moved from the Seattle area to Miami a year later, it was widely reported that he'd save $1 billion in taxes).

Finally, in November 2024, Gluesenkamp Perez was nearly two weeks late paying roughly $3,000 in property taxes on her home.

Gluesenkamp Perez declined to provide an on-the-record comment.

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