In Salt Lake City they gave their homeless peeps homes and many of them ended up going right back to work once their living situation was stabilized.
The situation is so bad(both in terms of crime, and total population) that our state legislators are non-ironically talking about calling the national guard. To clear out camps where violence is becoming a problem.
They already totally cut to the ground the shrubbery near one major camp because there were multiple assaults and a rape using those bushes as cover.
Sadly that would be "socialism" so it's not politically popular... damned legacy of the red scare.
The extra local issue - national homelessness - ended up suffocating the resources made to solve a much smaller program.
So the solution seems to be to scale up this system in other cities and distribute the load.
Again, assuming that people make a genuine effort to do this, as opposed to deciding "lets put a homeless housing center in the middle of nowhere. We can then say that homeless don't work while discrediting the idea and earning political points with my base"
What does one do about people who want to abuse drugs, and will not move into housing with a no-drug use clause attached? I recently helped a guy move out of his free housing because dope was more important to him than a roof over his head. Cleaned out his whole appt, and moved dropped him off a block from the camps I mentioned above.
I help feed this guy most weeks, and when he's sober he's really cool, but he's consciously choosing dope over a better life. I can't really force him into treatment, nor do I really think it would help unless he wanted them.