KATU is On Your Side covering the homeless crisis that has gripped our city and the solutions that are working. And we have some good news about a formerly homeless man we've been tracking since December, when KATU's Angelica Thornton connected him and two friends with the resources they needed to get off the streets.

Daniel King finally has a place of his own to call home.

"We were actually straight across, right over there," said King, pointing across the Willamette River.

King is talking about the campsite where we first met him just before Christmas. His tent was tucked away in the trees in the Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge. He can now see it from the roof deck of his new apartment building along the south waterfront.

"Pretty nice. I like it up here," said King. "It's actually really relaxing, especially at night."

King's friend Patrick Jensen is the man who got the ball rolling.

Jensen emailed KATU telling us he and two of his friends, King and James Jones, had been homeless after losing their jobs during the pandemic. They couldn't pay rent and were evicted.

They were scrambling to find any kind of housing and kept hitting dead ends.

Seven days after moving in, he proudly gave us a tour of the onebedroom he now calls home. He says he's still stunned by the change.

"I was totally shellshocked when I saw it," said King. "Because this is a nice place and it's just like... I didn't think they would accept homeless people here."

King says it's beyond anything he imagined after years of instability. He told us he's been homeless off and on his entire life.

Patrick Jensen is still at the Clinton Triangle, but not for long. Case managers also helped him get his ducks in a row and apply for apartments. He gets the keys to his new place in two weeks.

https://katu.com/news/local/excitedf...

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