Homes with lock, bathroom, AC/Heat, kitchen, bedroom, living/dining area, and food.
I predict 50-70% of the issues disease and violence would go away if they had homes and not shelters.
A security,sanitation crew could probably bring this disease and violence down even further.
I don't think there is any architecture that coders or startups can bring to help this problem overall. I would suggest private charity and learning to identify those who need and truly want help in your personal spheres to be a greater benefit than concocting a grand plan to save everyone.
You also need to work on outreach -- letting people on the streets know that there is a place they can go to get help. Social services departments tend to not be nearly explicit enough in helping get people to the right sorts of help they need; additionally, a lot of social workers are overworked and underpaid, which leads to a good amount of burnout which further exacerbates the problem.
Saying we need more housing shows a misunderstanding as to why this problem exists. There are a lot of things that need to be done before, and concurrent with, housing in order to fix this problem. Otherwise, you'll end up just whitewashing the situation.
no, what you end up with is homeless people having a chance to sleep under the roof whenever they want and for whatever long they want (why shelters kick people out on the street every morning? At least why not provide the homeless with a fixed guaranteed bed every night and a locker to keep her/his stuff?)
http://santacruz.patch.com/groups/politics-and-elections/p/t...
Linked from that article: http://www.unitedwayla.org/home-for-good/
But if they could keep their shit together well enough to navigate that system, they would probably just get a job.