The rule right now is before cities can start clearing out people, they have to have enough beds/locations for the homeless. If there's not enough places for the homeless then public camping is legal. (meaning that if cities wanted to clear out the homeless they can build a place for them to stay.)
It builds and builds, until you end up with these small cities having homeless populations that can be sheltered in a single apartment complex type build of say 500-2000 people or so, and then something like the city of LA that might have something like 45000 homeless people. That's a project on an entirely different scale, that's half the population of Burbank right there just in homeless people of shelter space that has to be built in one city by this rule. On top of the existing housing crisis of a lack of places to live for everyone else too. If this is the law set by a federal judge then it seems the federal government should pay for it, if its going to be so amazingly costly for cities to bear this build out.
But obviously there's something in the 9th's position that a consensus feels is worth reviewing. I wouldn't for a minute assume that means the cities get everything they want. Remember that whatever they decide will be the law for five times as many states as the 9th oversees. But likewise, I don't see the 9th's position as very practical in terms how any given city has to implement it. Let's start by recognizing that some homeless are not victims of circumstance. It makes me want to hear the best arguments on both sides.
A more humane treatment of the homeless is also a benefit to the tax payer.
If housing the homeless in prisons is cheap, then a program where they can come and go from a prison but otherwise use it as a sanctuary would not be bad. If we are talking about treating the unhoused as criminals then that's where I take issue.
People's problem isn't with the homeless in general, it's with the mentally ill and/or drug addicted ones that shit on public transit/street corners and accost strangers and turn public parks into open air heroin dens. Free housing won't help this sort of homeless.
The people you mention are a tiny visible minority.