Stung by the revelation that Portland City Council has been paying both for distributing tents and tarps and for cleaning up tents and tarps, Portland announced a new plan at a press conference.

“We’ve been paying groups to pass out the tents and then paying people to remove the tents from the streets,” spokesperson Sherman Melville explained. “That seemed like a waste of money, so we’re moving to a self-service approach.”

Under the new model, the county and NGO groups will be bypassed and racks of tents, tarps, stoves, drug paraphernalia, and Narcan will be set up and the homeless can help themselves.

“Won’t they just steal everything?” a reporter asked.

“You’re stereotyping street citizens,” Melville said. “We’ll pass out flyers explaining the new system so they understand that they should just take what they need. We’ll write no stealing in all Caps so they know not to do it.”

When asked about the cleanup end of the cycle, Melville explained the new “Bus your campsite” policy.

“We are going to ask street citizens to police their own campsites, and dispose of used tents, tarps, gear and human waste in appropriate receptacles. Of course there will be separate bins for composting, recycling and landfill.”

When a reporter pointed out that the homeless have never cleaned their own sites, Melville replied, “There’ll be flyers explaining why they need to.”

When it was pointed out that Portland’s latest camping ban would soon go into effect, making the new system unnecessary, Milville disagreed.

“We’re implementing the new system just in case we don’t enforce this newest camping ban either.”