I used to live in a city (Portland) with a pretty sizeable homeless population. Last time I went back there, I was astonished at how the homeless population has

I used to live in a city (Portland) with a pretty sizeable homeless population. Last time I went back there, I was astonished at how the homeless population has grown. Tent cities everywhere. It really is shocking. I want to remain compassionate, too. What it comes down to for me is, I can't be too angry at the people living in these tent cities -- that's no one's first choice (barring, of course, that in any population some very small percentage of people want an itinerant life like that; certainly not this many). So I wondered, how has society broken down that this is it for so many people? How has the city, the state, and the federal government skewed the great societal playing field, that so many people must live like this? The safety net has a lot of holes, more than it seems like it used to, and who gains? For whom is this status quo the preferred one? I don't have answers (outside the usual economic stuff like, real wages haven't risen alongside the big three economic sinks for most people, education, health care, housing; a lot of attainable jobs have been sent overseas or replaced by technology), but where my compassion goes is, it can't be this many people's bad choices that got them here -- or, if it is, how has society been restructured that bad choices get people here, where falling this far didn't used to be such a readily available option? I do know that, doing the same thing we've been doing isn't going to get things to be better. And, intuitively, I don't think that smashing up tent cities (like they frequently do in Portland, in "sweeps") or jailing these people is going to solve the problem. I like what Utah has done. It's unfortunate that that hasn't worked in Denver; I wonder why. I don't like what Portland does (sweeps, moving people from encampment to encampment, tossing out what little stability and possessions they have). But I don't know what else we could do, locally or nationally. Definitely open to hearing options.