So it basically does nothing at all? Just from personal observation, it seems like that would make sense - there's a group of homeless people who are homeless due to circumstance, hate being homeless, and will try as hard as they can to only be homeless for a short time.

Then there's the other group, people with severe mental illness, drug addiction, who aren't rational and are chronically homeless because they basically can't function in society. You could give them as much money as you want and it wouldn't make much of a difference. What they need is to be put in some kind of permanent care.