June 11, 2025

Novatore Zana home

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Photo booth pictures are tacked to the refrigerator in the Northwest Portland home of Marcieline Novatore and her partner Eloise Zana, Jan. 22, 2024. Novatore and Zana, both in their mid-20s, each experienced homlessness in Portland. Oregon has the highest rate of unaccompanied, unsheltered youth in the nation.
*Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB*

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Marcieline Novatore, left, and her partner Eloise Zana, with their cat, “Hamb.” The couple are planning their wedding, to take place in August.
*Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB*

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Eloise Zana knits a sock in their Northwest Portland home, Jan. 22, 2024. Zana and their partner experienced homelessness previously, and continue to find and offer support through Portland’s homeless youth community. “We take care of us,” said Zana. “That's a big saying in the community: ‘We take care of us.'”
*Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB*

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Zana is also an artist, putting their skills to work to support “Rad Pride 2023,” which was a grassroots, noncorporate Pride event held in July, 2023, at Irving Park.
*Courtesy of Eloise Zana*

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Marcieline Novatore watches a video in her Northwest Portland home, Jan. 22, 2024. Novatore is a prolific visual and sound artist, drawing on her life experience as an Indigenous, transgender woman.
*Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB*

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Art and dried flower bouquets in the Northwest Portland home of Marcieline Novatore and Eloise Zana.
*Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB*

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Marcieline Novatore and her dog “Bow” walk up to their Northwest Portland apartment, Jan. 22, 2024. Novatore became homeless after leaving a family situation where she felt unsafe. “I was just trying to escape and that isn't a choice sometimes,” said Novatore. “I was so tired of homophobia, transphobia and racism. I was like, ‘I'd rather be homeless than work a normie life and not be myself.’”
*Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB*

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