SHARE/WHEEL, the homeless activist groups that operate Tent City, will sleep outside City Council member Tim Burgess' house for a second night tonight, the groups announced in a press release. "I don't understand why they can't target some of my colleagues," Burgess jokes. So far, the group has camped outside Mayor Greg Nickels' and Burgess' houses.

Last night, between 40 and 50 homeless activists slept outside Burgess' Queen Anne house to protest what they described as the council's refusal to provide the group with $50,000 for bus tickets "to keep 500 men and women going to and from their shelters," according to a press release. (SHARE/WHEEL has not yet returned a call for comment).

Burgess describes the situation differently. He says the city already gives SHARE/WHEEL more than $300,000 a year to operate its tent cities and homeless shelters (around $310,000 in the mayor's latest budget proposal), and that the groups should figure out a way to "manage their money to cover those bus passes." He says the council did offer the groups the chance to borrow $50,000 against their 2010 budget allocation to pay for the bus passes; however, SHARE/WHEEL says taking the money would require them to keep their shelters open even if they run out of money, something Burgess says he was not aware of.

Burgess went out and talked to the protesters last night, and went on a walk with a group of them at 5:00 this morning. By the time he got back to get ready for work, he says, "the entire group was gone. It's quite an operation—a big truck came and brought all their supplies, including a Port-A-Potty on a little wagon, and then took them away."