> It is no coincidence that the cities that actually provide the most support and resources for the homeless actually have the worst homeless problems. Reading

> It is no coincidence that the cities that actually provide the most support and resources for the homeless actually have the worst homeless problems. Reading this reminded me of the story of the emperor who, on learning that the most plague-ridden parts of his empire also had the most doctors, promptly ordered all the doctors killed. My point is: you're taking a correlation and arguing a causation most people would consider backwards. The mechanism you've suggested for this causation - homeless people migrate to places with better services, increasing the net homelessness - assumes a lot about homeless people: that they have the means to afford travel, that they are informed about services for homelessness, that they are rational and in sound frame of mind, and that homeless people avail of homelessness services. Almost none of these are actually backed by available data on chronic homelessness! (The Wikipedia article for this is a treasure-trove of primary sources on this front). This mechanism is too weak to support the model listed here. It ignores that a full fifth to a third of homeless people suffer from one form of mental illness or another (mental illness accounts for the number three reason for chronic homelessness). The homeless population includes teenagers (nearly half of all foster children are homeless by the time they turn 18) as much as adults. Lack of affordable housing is among the leading causes of homelessness - if these people hd money to travel, they sure as heck wouldn't be homeless in the first place. This is not to say that some homeless people may migrate to places with better services - there are always exceptions. The vast majority, however, can't. It's just not valid to make the leap from "cities with better services become magnets for the homeless" to saying "that's the reason cities with more or better services also have high homelessness". > The fact that it would be good to be able to sit at a city bus stop ... is a good thing even if there are still homeless people in your city Agreed! But exclusionary architecture is not the only road guaranteed to get to nice bus stops. In fact, it is not even guaranteed to get to nice bus stops. It is the "let them eat cake" approach to getting nice bus stops: great for those who aren't homeless, lousy for those who are. It boils down to if you want nice bus stops for everyone or just those who aren't homeless. If you want everyone to enjoy nice bus stops, then you invest in solving homelessness, not in propping up barriers for them. That's the long and short of it.