Your poop is supposed to represent the “troubles” at camp. The tent and its owner are the park and Portlanders troubled by the sight of an on-going protest in the park. You ask the tent owner to ignore your poop. Here is where my problem with the analogy lies: we are not ignoring the poop and asking to focus on the bigger picture. To bring it back into real context, we’re not asking people to look away from the drug use, crime, and houselessness. We’re asking for those who currently control funding and the greater society to take some responsibility for creating the conditions which cause people to become houseless, fall into crime and drug use. On the ground, there’s much support coming from local organizations, but they are all suffering from insufficient funding. Streetroots just put together a list of suggestions, please see them here:

Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Portland protests over the past five weeks are about creating social change, locally and nationally, on a range of policy matters from poverty to foreign wars.

For better or worse, many of the organic protests staging camps throughout the country have gotten a hard dose of reality about what life is like for hundreds of thousands of people experiencing homelessness in the United States.

Occupy Portland, the media, City Hall, police and others around town have more times than not keyed in on the mishaps and barriers to people experiencing mental health and homelessness at the downtown camps. What none of the parties have effectively done is put things into perspective, and call on specific policy changes and resource development for people experiencing poverty.

In one of many of Mayor Sam Adams communiqués to general public he said, “The Occupy Portland movement has highlighted the challenges our community, like many across the country, are facing with homelessness. Too many in our community are without a safe place to call home. Despite fiscal challenges, the City has continued to invest in long-term solutions to end homelessness. Commissioner Fish and I will be working closely with our dedicated network of service providers to make sure everyone at the camp is aware of the resources that are available. Experienced outreach workers will be reaching out to the homeless people at the camp to help them access existing resources in our community, like health care, emergency shelter, permanent housing placement assistance, and short term needs.”

The problem is that adequate resources do not exist for permanent housing or mental health services in our community.

The City of Portland is anticipating significant federal and local cuts that will challenge its ability to keep the safety net intact and provide housing for those most in need. No doubt, we live in challenging times. During a period of increased need for our services, and the people of Portland, budgets are declining — seriously declining for the Portland Housing Bureau.

In fact, if projections are correct, the city’s essential housing agency is on pace to lose tens of millions of dollars next year due to the decline in tax increment financing, cuts at the federal level, and sweeping city-wide cuts of between 4 and 8 percent to all city bureaus. In addition, one-time general fund dollars allocated for homelessness and housing services are always a crisis away from disappearing. The other side of this coin is unsustainably high unemployment and dwindling support systems to staunch the flow of tomorrow’s homeless.

The system is teetering. Hence, Occupy Portland and the call for social change.

What’s the answer? Nationally, the Occupy Wall Street Movement has been met with mixed results and a growing movement of people who call the group disorganized, fractured, and lacking in planning and objectives. Saying that, even in the face of apathy and a conservative backlash, the movement has inspired close to a million Americans over six weeks to move their accounts from larger banking institutions to local credit unions and community-owned banks. The movement also influenced other banking institutions to drop debit card fees — showing that regardless of all of the white noise — consumer power still has muscle, even if on a smaller scale.

Locally, the signs of success are harder to pinpoint.

City Hall and others have said Occupy Portland needs a goal, and contrary to the big picture messaging, that goal doesn’t have to be a nationwide sea change to be a success. There are real solutions within our reach, within sight of City Hall, and responsive to the issues Occupy Portland as amplified.

Here’s what Street Roots thinks the city and Occupy Portland should work toward:

— Secure $1 million dollars for rent assistance this winter, protecting vulnerable renters from losing their housing. It is always less costly, and more humane, to preserve housing than to restore it.

— Waive the budget cuts to the Portland Housing Bureau in the 2012-13 budget due to the financial, employment and housing crisis.

— Guarantee one-time allocations towards homeless, housing and mental health services in the 2012-13 budget. There are thousands of people who are one service away from the streets, and countless services struggling to manage that demand.

— Loosen the stringent laws around camping to allow churches and private businesses to host orderly places for people to sleep. (See our editorial.)

— Work with the county and state to develop a strategy to backfill millions of dollars lost for mental health services.

— Aggressively pursue a regional strategy – working with willing partners at the federal state and local levels — to develop sustainable, long-term resources.

If Occupy Portland and City Hall are both serious about creating social change and effecting policy in a healthy environment for people on the streets — the bullets outlined above are what help get us there. Everyone deserves a safe and decent home. Everyone deserves opportunity.

Three thousand human beings with nowhere to sleep but the streets of Portland.

Expand the definition of “homeless” to include people in shelters, temp housing and bunking down with friends/family, and the number grows to 15,000.

Fifteen thousand human beings in Portland who have no home.

And those numbers have increased nearly 10% in the last two years.

So, Mayor Sam Adams… your sudden concern about a relatively small group of people sleeping in a couple of Portland parks is awfully unconvincing. Or is just that the Occupy movement – unlike individual homeless people – has a voice?

Your city is broken. Your county is broken. Your state is broken. Your country is broken. Occupy Portland is simply putting a spotlight on all that is broken, and demanding that government – at all levels – begin representing them and not the status quo. They are exercising their Constitutional rights as Americans in doing so.

You can try to sweep them under the rug. I doubt it will work. You may end up with blood on your hands. You have a decision to make, Mr Adams. Do you and your city government listen to the protesters (who have the support of the majority of your constituents, by the way) and take steps to address the issues? Or, do you fiddle while Portland burns?

Have you looked at the police reports of what happens in the Portland Metro area on any given day? Even pre-Occupied? It is NOT changing the nature of what is happening, just putting them in 2 city blocks instead of being spread out all over Portland.

Just as if one priest molests a child, does that make all of the Catholic church bad? Should we get rid of the church? A few makes the whole church ‘movement’ look bad, hey?

Why is it easier to believe that 15,000,000 Americans are being lazy rather than 400 Americans are being greedy?