Acceptable Losses
“Photos of my babies. My wallet. A really warm blanket.”
Kat Fry has lost track of how many things she’s had taken from her while living on the streets of Portland.
“It’s stressful to try to think about what I’ve lost,” she says. “I go to look for something and remember: ‘That’s right, it’s gone. They took it.’”
Some of Fry’s possessions have been stolen. Others have been trashed by tenants of the buildings near her tent in Old Town. But most of her lost property has been taken by the City of Portland.
After a recent trip to the emergency room for a spider bite, Fry returned to the street where she’d been sleeping to find her brand-new tent and sleeping bag had disappeared—plucked from the sidewalk by one of the city’s campsite cleanup crews while she was in the hospital. Fry’s backpack, which contained her prescription pain medication, was also gone.
Read more: https://www.portlandmercury.com/feature/2019/12/05/27586044/acceptable-losses
