Photo credit: Noël Lindquist
It’s Christmas Eve, 2019, and members of the Homeless Outreach Team in Missoula, Montana, pile out of a van near the Reserve Street Bridge. They unload rucksacks filled with sandwiches, hand warmers, and water bottles. Several volunteers tag along—one with blankets and another with gift-wrapped wool socks.
The outreach team goes down a steep, icy embankment to an island in the Clark Fork River behind the Walmart Supercenter, just upstream from a sewage treatment plant that delivers an intolerable sewage stench in summer months. On the island, homeless individuals camp alone in tents, or in small clusters.