The City Might Have Found A Plot of Land for Homeless Portlanders—But Right Now It's Contaminated

PETE OWENS lights another cigarette, happy to be feeling well enough to enjoy it.

Not long ago, Owens was sick. He's been homeless on and off for the last seven years, and knows the ailments that can come with that difficult lifestyle. He says this was different.

"It was bronchitis," Owens said last week, sitting on a bed raised off the ground by plastic milk cartons, in a little cluster of tents connected by a series of tarps. "I couldn't shake it."

Then he says: "It's because I was using the fill dirt."