[gmarx]

The only way to arrive at this conclusion is to group the short term and long term homeless together. I concede it might have changed since I last read up on the topic, but the short term homeless are the great majority and these are regular people who have lost their jobs or roommate situation and end up living in cars or shelters short term.

The article is clearly about the minority of homeless who are long term drug abusing street dwellers. Different problem, different solution.

Very high profile efforts to put the latter in free housing have failed.

On the other hand I have a friend (who is incidentally also a drug user but not so far gone that she couldn't stop when forced to wear a drug detecting patch to get her kid back) who became homeless. She immediately got into a shelter and now months later is moving into an apartment with her rent (I think) paid at least partly by the city. So anecdotally (and from some reading) the former group already has working solutions