but providing some stability through housing and food seems like a productive, and achievable first step for a city government to accomplish.The problem is how it's done.
I've eaten in soup kitchens. It tends to be lousy food and I was homeless because I have a serious medical condition and I eating healthy is critical to my ability to function at all.
A lot of homeless people have serious health issues and the attitude is "Beggars can't be choosers. Eat the free stuff that's been put in front of you." when sometimes that free stuff is actively harming their health and if you count the medical cost for requiring more medication and the opportunity cost in lost wages because they remain too sick to work, that "free meal" is an expensive as hell choice to make.
The longer I was on the street, the more I avoided things like soup kitchens, which not only tend to provide lousy food, they expose you to other people who are sick, coughing, haven't bathed recently, and are smoking either cigarettes or marijuana. I have a respiratory condition and am, additionally, allergic to marijuana. Soup kitchens were a nightmare.
What I think we ought to do is expand the food stamp program and lower the barriers to getting food stamps. Food stamps are put on a card, much like a debit card, and you spend it as you see fit and it gives you access to normal middle class food sources, like grocery stores.
Food is absolutely an essential and good quality food programs help protect the health of the people and mitigate the impacts of poverty, but many things aimed at "helping the homeless" are amazingly bad to the point of being mostly counterproductive in my first-hand experience as someone who was homeless for nearly 6 years. And when you are homeless, no one wants to hear your criticisms of this terrible program and how it doesn't actually meet your need. They expect you to be grateful while putting a gun to your head and saying "If you aren't eating at the awful soup kitchen, it's your own damn fault you can't solve your problems."
We really don't do a good job of helping America's poor access opportunity. This is no longer the land of opportunity and that's the crux of the problem.
If you can't already afford a new car and a big house, your life is likely slipping into the toilet rather than climbing towards a better future and it's incredibly hard to fight against the many trends pushing you down as just an individual being crushed under the boot of myriad larger forces.
I would like to see more mail services for the homeless generally, but the shelter system seems to be as bad as soup kitchens or worse and I never once spent the night in a homeless shelter.