PORTLAND, Ore. – Jeremy Wooldridge had just finished mowing the grass around his tent when he saw a truck pull up in front of his homeless encampment. He’d spent the past two years living here alongside a dead-end road in a neighborhood called Sumner, gradually overtaking a vacant field between a taxi company and a high school. He knew most of the nearby families by name and the makes and models of their cars, but this was a visitor he didn’t recognize.
He watched as three people got out and started coming toward his tent with a bright green sign labeled, “Illegal Campsite.” They walked past the small flower bed he’d planted nearby and up to a hand-painted boulder he’d placed on the sidewalk that read: “Welcome to Our Home.”
“Can I help you?” Jeremy asked. They handed him a box filled with sandwiches, bottled water, a new tent, and a sleeping bag and then…
