Yes, you can. It really is that simple. The homeless problem isn't persistent because it's technically hard. It's persistent because a segment of society is addicted to moral posturing in a way that blocks necessary and obvious solutions.

There is no legal or moral problem. Build adequate shelters in inexpensive locations and arrest everyone who camps on the street and refuses to go to one of these shelters. (This approach is also compatible with the recent SCOTUS stance on the subject.) Everyone needs a place to sleep, but there is no reason for society to support squatting on random public land as a lifestyle choice.

Which it has been in many places and still might be in some. But this has to be combined with some kind of program for them to exist legally.

Of course! And that's precisely what this case is about. It's not saying that city governments should never remove people from public spaces. It's saying if you don't have a space where it is legal to be homeless, only then can you not legally remove homeless people from public spaces.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tent_cities_in_the_Uni...

You might want to step back and take a deeper thought about this. We aren't very far removed from redlining and all manner of restrictions on where people live.

But even stepping back from mindless restrictions based on race, sexuality and religion, this is even problematic with objectively undesirable elements, like the homeless.

Lots of states and localities would love to make homelessness illegal. Many of them already toe that line. But what is a homeless person to do if each and every city outlaws their presence?

Will we build giant homeless refugee camps in the country's interior?

There are a wide variety of options. One which has historically worked well in Europe is to provide an area of shipping containers converted into simple homes with a shower, toilet, cot, and padlock on the door.

> "Homeless" is a euphemism, more of a metonym for a cluster of issues that form an identifiable other.

No, "homeless" is not a fucking euphemism. It means "without a home", just like "jobless" means "without a job" and "hopeless" means "without hope" and "grasp-on-reality-less" means "without a grasp on reality".

> Rich people need permits, licenses, planning permission, and community consent to build homes. Tent dwellers, not so much.

These permits, licenses, planning permission, and are community consent are necessary to prevent people with a wide variety of options from making decisions that harm other people.

Tent dwellers arguably cause harm to others by being there, but they don't have other options. The voluntarily homeless are few and far between.

The two kinds of laws are incomparable: one seeks to limit the harm done by people with too much power, while the other tries to write out of existence the only option a group of people have.

> In fact, if the resolution doesn't pass to prevent people from camping in the street, what's to stop anyone from setting up pre-fab luxury sidewalk camps like those at burning man.

When this becomes a problem let me know. Meanwhile, maybe we can talk about current real problems that exist, like the people who we are literally forcing to rot to death in our streets.

Note: I have been homeless. I prefer a little more practical solution, which is unpopular with many people...as almost any solution will be.

If a person is arrested for breaking a statute (municipalities usually have ordinances against camping in areas), without a residence in the county, move them to a staging area for identification and program entry (assign a sponsor). If they repeat offend without having participated in a program via the sponsor (or have violated out), move them to a minimal camp in an unincorporated part of the state. Filtering those who want to contribute versus those who are opting out, benefits those who try versus those who are not going to recover. I feel for the homeless people with master's degrees from various disciplines (see Youtube), but urban areas breed urban problems like illicit drug distribution, disease, sexual violations, open fires, burglary, etc. We know this historically. Why we continue to allow people to concentrate where they have the most opportunity to predate on the public and each other while simultaneously being enabled in self-destructive behavior is beyond me.

>From the amount of homeless and people living in tents and cars, AFAICT the expectation from this society is that people that can't afford rent for whatever reason should just live on the street.

Have you ever been to the US other than the west coast?

There's the occasional tent in a discreet spot in a vacant lot or under a bridge and the occasional car being lived out of at a truck stop. Maybe if you got every person living on the streets (vs a shelter) in a city to pick the same spot you'd have enough to be described as a "camp". It's nothing like you see on the west coast where the homeless are practically everywhere.

If all municipalities did this instantly and provided transportation to the homeless - either unincorporated parts of a state, or jail, most would choose jail. Nobody wants to try to survive in the wilderness.

I have the same exact problem here in California.

It's almost as if the cities want the homeless to remain homeless even if a section of the homeless are willing not to be

You don't need to live in suburbs to achieve that, really. And in suburbs you dont walk child to school all that often, you drive them anyway.

> It’s also understood that doing anything about the needles and homeless encampments would be a human rights violation, even if somehow the money were available, which it’s not.

I mean this 100% seriously: you can actually do things about homelessness that are not human rights violations. Big amount of homelessness is literally consequence of policies - and not the ones that seek to help people.

Living in a tent in the woods isn't even that bad, not if it's a real wilderness that can provide game for hunting and vegetation for foraging. You've just gone native, big deal.

But living in a tent in a concrete jungle is a completely different situation. There's no natural habitat to be had, the resources are all locked away behind commercial gatekeepers. When you try go native in an urban center you're for all intents and purposes becoming a criminal. Instead of picking berries and killing rabbits, you're stealing from vendors and/or residents.

I don't think tent encampments are appropriate for urban centers. The big SRO buildings always struck me as the tent encampment equivalent for an urban center. But even if you make those available to the homeless, you still need to give them access to some kind of currency as that's the key required for accessing resources controlled by the gatekeepers. Otherwise you'll just have a building full of thieves.

And now you're paying 10x as much to house them in a jail while probably increasing their chances of future illegal activity.

I agree with you, but providing full-time housing is just not feasible and would be very sensitive and pre-disposed to abuse.

I may be wrong as well, but my thought has always been that homeless camps are a good idea. One could build wells and outhouses similar to what you'd see at any standard family campground and designate "lots" for homeless to set up tents or a lean-to or what-have-you. This would also be the ideal location to distribute services to the homeless, or where charities could operate, all in a few centralized locations. Most of the charities that work for the homeless in my city are in the downtown area, consequently most of the homeless population can be found downtown despite the fact that there are very few safe places to sleep in the big city.

There are many variations of the camp idea, and certain modifications. One could require that a person register to be in the camp, or that they have no record of addiction or are currently in recovery, or that they have a case worker. These restrictions would help prevent a kind of "festering city" situation where the camp just becomes a place you can go to safely shoot up.

I can see an option for dedicated bus routes to and from the camps and then to other organizations in the city that could help the homeless (counselling centers, charities, drop-in centers, job centers, etc.)

Ideally it would be run like a community. Charities and organizations plan events in the camp, with dedicated hosting buildings and whatnot, with people who live in the camp encouraged to become active in helping with maintenance and organization and maybe even some wage-paying jobs within the camp (they would be considered government workers in that case).

Because the facilities are limited and there isn't much infrastructure to maintain, the camps would be cheap for local governments to build while also being a relatively long-term option for people (mostly homeless people are looking for a dedicated and safe place to sleep, which the camps would provide).

Not quite, a homeless person could invade an empty home and sleep in that bed. This is done all the time, and is somewhat covered by squatter's rights. It's currently assumed that greater than 15% of the world's population are squatters. [1]

Squatting is the action of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land–or a building, usually residential–that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use.

Author Robert Neuwirth suggested in 2004 that there were one billion squatters globally. He forecasts there will be two billion by 2030 and three billion by 2050.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squatting

I want to point out that it is a departure from laissez-faire to criminalise, arrest, and taze the homeless, but another conceivable departure from laissez-faire is to house them.

EDIT to clarify.

This is a very good point, and i never see it mentioned - people will generally create their own housing out of whatever they have avaliable. These take the forms of refugee camps and slums, but they can and sometimes do evolve to something respectable over time - after all thats how housing began at the dawn of civilisation.

Now if the person's right to create his own shelter and solve his own problem has been taken away, then a substitute must be provided.

Every now and then we get people who make a mudhut or a tree house

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7826923/amp/Man-fights-live-inside-self-built-tree-house-council-bans-bushfire-risk.html

Losing your parking spot is a minor commercial inconvenience to someone with (I assume) other resources; losing their campsite, especially without alternatives, costs an unhoused person their home and their shelter from the elements.

I'm not even sure what we're discussing - these people need shelter and homes, of course. Park regulations are secondary.

Not all unhoused people litter. One person is not guilty of or responsible for what someone else does. You are not responsible for what I do and vice-versa.