The homeless are often out of public view, which is one reason dozens of volunteers throughout the Triangle got up in the middle of the night last Tuesday to participate in a project to find and assist them.

The mayors of Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Hillsborough joined other volunteers in venturing out in the wee hours as part of the local participation in a project called the 100,000 Homes Campaign.

They headed out to the often hidden areas where homeless people bed down, to assess their chronic issues and address their most pressing needs.

But a few of the members of the local homeless population aren't hard to find at all.

They're camped in tents on Peace and Justice Plaza, the open area in front of the downtown Franklin Street Post Office in Chapel Hill.

A month or two ago, you may recall, that spot was a small tent city, home base for the Occupy Chapel Hill movement that sprang up last fall in response to the international wave of Occupy protesters.

During Occupy's three-month run, a dozen or more tents crowded the plaza.

When the Occupy folks officially ended their encampment on Jan. 10, those tents came down - except one.

The man living in it, who Occupy organizers say had no other home, simply decided to stay. Since then, two more tents have gone up.

So far as we can tell, they aren't staging an Occupy event or protesting anything.

They're just, well, living there.

But in doing that, whether they intend to or not, they are making a point and raising questions.

Their presence forces us to at least acknowledge at least two issues.

One, of course, is the formidable and multifaceted problem of homelessness. It's pretty hard to ignore when it's camped in front of the post office on the main block of the business district.

The other is the town's policies on the use of public space.

Technically, you're not allowed to camp or stay overnight on public property. The town waived those rules for the Occupy encampment, and thus far it has declined to enforce them against the people still camping there.

But it's hard to believe town officials will be willing to let them stay indefinitely. Town Manager Roger Stancil has said that the end of Occupy offers "a timely opportunity" to discuss the policy regarding public space and that he intends to make sure that town regulations are enforced.

If the folks now camping on Peace and Justice Plaza settle in for the long haul, or if more people join them, that conversation will become that much more pressing.

The Occupy movement's most important accomplishment, many people said, was that it "changed the conversation." The people living in front of the Post Office are doing the same.