You know, I actually paused after those words because I was afraid of a response like this, but I didn't rephrase because I just figured "they'll get what I mea

You know, I actually paused after those words because I was afraid of a response like this, but I didn't rephrase because I just figured "they'll get what I mean". In the context of my response, I really just meant it as shorthand for "not doing any of the negative stuff that Seattleites deal with on an everyday basis". Lots of homeless people are already doing that--namely, not putting the general public at risk with violence or needles sitting around--but many of the ones visible to us are making the city worse off. So again, my OP should really be reframed as: "if you take a dangerous drug addict and put them in a house, they're still a dangerous drug addict". And I do implicitly mean there that if you take a non-dangerous, knocked-off-their-feet homeless person and put them in a house, you now have a housed person, and that's a very positive thing :)