Even if that's the case, it's still better to get the people who want to get off the street into housing. Then you can move onto specific solutions for other people.
That's the rub - society doesn't want the homeless dragging their vices into these homes. So the homeless just stay on the street where they can do whatever they want.
Or
Scrounging for a couple bucks today so you can get a fix and spend the day mostly zonked out of your mind, and not enduring literal psychological torture.
I have empathy for those who supposedly "don't want" to go clean. Maybe, we could give them some absolute minimum humanity and decency before asking them to give up the one thing that allows them to escape literal torture of a process and state that exists the way it does entirely to scare poor people into working themselves to death to at least have a legal residence and not be on the street.
I will re-emphasize "You can bring a horse water, you cannot make it drink". To us it's unfathomable, drinking water is so good and important, so the problem seems simple. Just give them water. But it seems that there is some contingent of society who just does not like to drink water. Even if you give them pristine water and a safe place to drink it (as mark regularly does).
If you needed to fix homelessness, the way to do it would be to round everyone up and force them into a program. Like a nice camp with food, housing, recreation, counseling, and no drugs. No drugs.
The key word here is force. But you cannot do that. They are adults and ultimately they control what they do. So you give them the option, and inevitably they just chose to stay on the street. Mark has lamented endlessly about this.