BANGOR — Steven Cronk, 41, sleeps among a row of tattered, sun-bleached tents that cling to a small strip of land between this city’s rusting railroad tracks and the Penobscot River. He estimated that most of the roughly five dozen people in this homeless encampment have HIV .

Cronk is among them. He is certain he was infected through a dirty needle , and is still reeling from the diagnosis he received about a year ago.

“Some days I think I’ve got a handle on it, some days it just goes downhill,” said Cronk, who has spent much of his life homeless.

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