Homelessness is a hard issue. It's not as simple as just showing compassion and providing these services. Other places have tried to provide services to help the homeless and they often end up completely destroyed. I lived in Seattle for a few years and every new initiative to help just ended in complete disaster.

The working homeless who aren't on drugs aren't really the hard group of homeless to help, or the ones who cause problems. It's the ones who are on drugs who will strip the wires from a house you provide, or completely ruin any apartment on a drug binge. It even got so bad in Seattle that ports potties provided to camps were completely and irrevocably destroyed by the homeless.

I wish the issue was as simple to solve as "provide services and show compassion" but it isn't. We do a disservice to everyone by not acknowledging the full scope and difficulty of this problem and boiling it down to simple ineffective platitudes.