So fucking sick of people like this. They genuinely believe that every single homeless person in America is a hyper-visible, unmedicated schizophrenic who's too mentally ill to want to get off the street. Never mind that the vast majority are members of the working poor and live in cars, friends' places and transitional housing—doesn't get more invisible than that.
Universal housing would effectively solve the homelessness crisis and every counterargument is actually a supporting one if you have half more than half of a braincell. Yes, a lot of homeless people need additional (i.e. psychiatric) help, BUT THEY ALSO NEED HOUSING because poverty literally exacerbates mental illness. Yes, libraries shouldn't be treated as homeless shelters, which is WHY HOMELESS PEOPLE NEED HOUSING. Yes, a lot of people who're forced to live in squalor on a literal street corner smell, which is why THEY NEED HOUSING so they can have basic dignity and access to a shower.
A pet peeve of mine is that a just society ought to have a form of national service where everybody at regular intervals were required to go and do work for the common good, like helping people with addictions or the mentally ill.
Its like the argument that people make that everyone should be required to work food service and/or retail for like at least a week so that people would stop mistreating minimum wage workers who's jobs are hell. Sometimes empathy has to be forced. A national service thing seems like a great idea to me.