The obvious solution

An alert reader had an interesting suggestion yesterday about a way to house Portland's hordes of street campers: When all the downtown law firms and accounting firms have left for the suburbs, convert their offices into homeless shelters. Or even the free apartments that the politicians are determined to hand out.

The professional firms have discovered over the past year that they are paying for way more space than they need, even in good times in a good location. Between that realization and the "End Civ" phenomenon that has destroyed downtown, there will be plenty of empty office space there for many years to come. Let the homeless people have it.