"I don't want anything from you. I don't want any free ride from you at all..."

Oregonian people experiencing homelessness are flexing their protesting muscles and this type of action is beginning to become more and more frequent across the country. I guess you can't expect it to be much different when people have nothing else to lose and nowhere else to go....

City Hall and homeless talking past one another

Shelters are available, but campers want the right to sleep outside

FACTBOX • By the numbers

Monday, May 12, 2008

ANNA GRIFFIN

The Oregonian Staff

As the homeless protest at Portland City Hall hits its third and apparently final week, the philosophical gap between city leaders and protesters grows even wider.

City leaders say protesters need to stop camping outside City Hall now that they've been provided with more shelter space. Homeless people and their advocates say they never asked for shelter space. Rather, they want the right to sleep outdoors and looser anti-loitering laws.

For now, there's no obvious middle ground. Even if this protest ends Tuesday, as Mayor Tom Potter seems to have declared it will with his decision to start forcing campers out over the weekend, more are likely in the future. Everybody agrees the city needs more permanent housing, but that's a long-term solution dependent on a finite -- and shrinking -- pool of money.

"This is a broader social problem all over the world," said Austin Raglione, his chief of staff. "We can't find permanent housing on demand, immediately. That takes time. But we do have shelter beds."

The protest began when a group of homeless men and women, infuriated by police sweeps of camping sites beneath the Burnside Bridge, relocated to City Hall. As many as 100 people have gathered at times, wrapping around three sides of the seat of city government and crowding busy downtown sidewalks.

Portland laws bar people from overnighting on public property and loitering. But because this is a protest, those rules don't apply.

Protesters say their immediate priority is an end to those laws, or at least a promise that city police and private security guards won't enforce them. Several headed indoors and up a floor to speak at last week's City Council meeting.

"I don't want anything from you. I don't want any free ride from you at all," said Lisa Iacuzzi, part of the group now calling itself the "Homeless Liberation Front." "I have a master's degree. I paid my way for my own education. I don't want anything free. I just don't want to be treated like a criminal."

Potter thanked Iacuzzi and the other protesters, but said he can't drop the camping ban or the loitering "sit-lie" law. "The solution to homelessness is not camping," he said. "It's moving folks into housing."

Portland leaders are trying to do exactly that.