I'm reminded of the article the Seattle Times did on a local homeless encampment that was in the Ballard Commons park for over a year. They did their best to make it sympathetic to the people living in the park, but it was hard to take it too seriously when the cover picture chosen had a visible crack pipe in it. Even in the linked article, "Coconut" has a crack pipe in his hand.

It's a complex issue, and people tend to talk about different things when discussing the homeless problem. As far as I can tell, there are two groups of people - able people who have been displaced due to financial, medical, job-related reasons and are now homeless, who need social support (in the form of cash) to get out of the poverty hole and not fall back in.

And then there's the second group, for whom living on the streets is preferable to entering shelters or rehab facilities due to a crippling drug dependency. This is the group that makes the headlines, mainly because they're the ones making public spaces unsafe (there's a headline every day about an assault in Seattle where somebody gets attacked unprovoked by someone in this second group of people).

What do you do with the repeat offenders who refuse to go to rehab and stay clean? Public spaces should be usable by all.