Early on Tuesday morning, Michelle woke up in her beige tent, which she’d placed in a line of eight others on Northwest Fourth Avenue between Flanders and Glisan a few days earlier. Her small brown pup, Penny, was her only tent-mate. She’d adopted the dog two years ago when its original owner died of an overdose , she said.

“I haven’t been out on the streets like this for a minute,” said Michelle, 45, as she stood in front of her tent just before 8 a.m., organizing her things.

Michelle, who declined to give her last name, has been more or less homeless since before the pandemic, but has spent much of the last several years staying with friends or in motels, she said. She said she is from Vancouver originally. She has lived in Portland for 10 years.

Michelle was about to be one of the

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