Jessica Walke was 14 years old when she slept outside for the first time.
Under a park gazebo in Prineville, Oregon with a horse blanket to keep her warm, she wasn’t sure she’d make it through the night.
The catalyst was what Jessica now refers to as “a series of unfortunate events” – her stepfather abandoned the family, leaving a trail of unpaid bills and causing Jessica and her mother to be evicted. A teenage Jessica, left alone often while her mother worked three jobs, stayed out one night until 3 a.m. and received a curfew violation, landing her at the police station. The next day, she was suspended from school after an argument with a teacher.
When Jessica’s mother picked her up that afternoon, all her belongings were lined up along the fence outside their home.
“I’m sorry,” Jessica recalls her mother saying. “You’re not going to know why I’m doing this now, but you’ll understand when you’re older.”
For the next 12 years, Jessica bounced around the country trying to survive as she fell into addiction. She was homeless in more than 10 different cities, often moving to escape abusive partners or in pursuit of sobriety, knowing she needed to be somewhere new to break the cycle.
Eventually, Jessica ended up back in Portland, where her father lives.
And on her 18th birthday, Jessica received the best present of her life. She was pregnant.
But her life circumstances meant her infant daughter would be at risk of entering foster care, so Jessica gave temporary guardianship to her father.
She was using methamphetamine by the time her daughter was a year old.
But Jessica stayed close by, spending five years in the Lents area, camping in entrenched tent compounds along the Springwater Corridor trail or tucked in ditches next to Interstate 205 in Southeast Portland, out of sight from residential areas.
During that time, she estimates her camps were removed by cleaning crews 50 to 60 times. Jessica survived with resourcefulness: collecting cans, cutting out coupons, and panhandling when desperate. It was degrading, she said.
She was offered a bed at a congregate shelter twice in those years. But there were barriers she couldn’t overcome, such as sobriety requirements. At that time, Jessica felt that option wasn’t better than sleeping outside where she had the autonomy to come and go as she pleased.
One day last summer, Jessica rode by on her bike as her ex-boyfriend's campsite was being cleaned by Rapid Response. She heard he'd just moved into Reedway, the new tiny home village nearby. By a “measure of luck,” an outreach worker soon found Jessica and offered her a pod.
She’d heard Reedway was a low-barrier shelter comprised of individual units offering support in getting chronically homeless people into housing.
“I always knew that I was meant for more, to do more than exist out here on the streets, but I never thought that I would stop the cycle,” Jessica said.
The transition proved difficult. Living outside was all Jessica knew.
For the first two nights, she didn’t sleep in her new pod at Reedway. Instead, she went back to her boyfriend’s camp.
The third day, she woke up in the pod with an empty, confused feeling.
"The first thought in my head was ‘this is where you're supposed to be, just keep on doing it',” Jessica reflected. “It dawned on me that I’ve tried everything else, why not give this a little bit of effort.”
Jessica was ready to embrace the next steps but was interrupted by devastation.
While she’d stumbled upon a spontaneous offer for shelter at Reedway, her partner had not.
By August, Jessica’s boyfriend Cody was still living in a tent in Lents. The couple had been by each other’s side for three years, surviving the streets together. They struggled through multiple attempts at sobriety, and Jessica was hopeful he’d get into shelter soon.
But on an August day, when they had plans to go to the International Rose Test Garden in Northwest Portland, she received the worst possible news. Cody had died of an overdose in his tent.
Jessica believes Cody may have been “hot-shotted” — a street term for a cocktail of drugs mixed into a dose for an unsuspecting victim – because an autopsy showed fentanyl in his system, a potent synesthetic opioid he did not use.
Jessica grieves never being able to know for sure what happened to Cody.
“I know I couldn’t have saved him, but I wasn’t able to say goodbye either,” Jessica said.
In the months after, Reedway continued to be a secure place for Jessica to heal, to escape the constant survival mode she’d lived in for as long as she could remember.
After adjusting to the shelter, Jessica began attending classes and support groups – from journaling to arts and crafts to trauma recovery. She was able to get a copy of her birth certificate and social security card, important identification documents she’d never had.
“I felt like I stepped into a different world when I would come back to the village and eventually there was there was a strong pull to go back home every night,” Jessica said.
In December, Jessica's care coordinator at Reedway started talking to her about a housing voucher.
“At first, I didn’t really believe it,” Jessica reflected. “I’ve been homeless since I was 14, so that never felt like an option for me.”
It took two weeks for reality to set in. Then, she started getting excited.
By December 28, after being at Reedway for six months, Jessica moved into a 1-bedroom apartment in Beaverton. She chose Washington County in an attempt to create some distance between herself and her old lifestyle and friends. Her case worker through All Good NW helped secure the housing by writing a promissory note, since Jessica didn’t have any rental history. She was given financial support to buy furniture and receives a monthly allowance for groceries and life essentials.
The transition was uncomfortable, but not impossible.
For the first two months in her new home, Jessica felt unsure. She came back to Lents often, and had the urge to pitch a tent or stay in a friend’s RV. But then she’d realize she didn’t have to.
“When I was homeless, I could walk away from anything,” Jessica said. “I’ve had moments since being in my apartment when I feel like I could walk away, because that’s all I’ve known. It almost feels like this isn't the right path because it's such a different and new experience... it's absolutely terrifying. Like your worst fear standing in front of you, but it's not. It's just your house."
In those moments of inner turmoil, Jessica seeks familiarity, like going for a walk or even to collect cans, something she did while homeless. Except now she knows she doesn’t have to.
“I remember getting tired being out for hours canning when I was homeless, but I just didn't want to go back to my camp because it was a camp,” Jessica recalled. “I would walk by people's houses and smell dinner, and it would make me so depressed. Now I'll only be out for maybe 20, 30 minutes and then I'm like okay, ‘I can go make some food at my own home now.’"
In March, Jessica’s 7-year-old daughter stayed at her new apartment for their first-ever sleepover together. Jessica dyed her daughter’s hair pink at the little girl’s request. They played board games and snuggled in bed together.
“My daughter makes me happy, and there’s so much potential to help her flourish and be better than anything that I even imagined,” Jessica said. “She’s thriving. And if she’s good, I’m good.”
Jessica’s housing voucher will cover 12 months of rent. In the meantime, she can save up to figure out her next steps. She’s not sure if 1 year will be enough time to stabilize so she can fully take care of herself. But she’s seeking employment and trying to get a car. She’s seeing a mental health counselor to support in recovery and develop the self-care tools to build a new life.
Jessica’s currently spending her days making crafts, and sourcing supplies for her projects from thrift stores like Goodwill. And she returns to the Lents neighborhood every Friday to volunteer for PDX Saints Love, which sets up a food and clothing tent in the park.
"Now I get to give a leg up to people I was struggling in the rain with,” she said.
To her old community of friends still living on the streets of Portland, she encourages an open mind about accepting shelter at a site like Reedway.
“Give it a chance,” she says.
*Story shared with permission; based on interviews with Jessica in February and April, 2024.