> Most of the homeless people in the Boardwalk area there are in exactly the same situation as my friend was in, except they’ve been trapped in it for years

Most cities & states just try to fix the symptoms of homelessness (& crime), and not the actual root of the problem. There needs to be a federal mental health program to handle this, and maybe states & cities will stop playing 'hot potato', shipping them back and forth to be someone else's problem