I live in one of the west coast cities, and while I am fairly YIMBY and think new development is very important, I think the most impactful part of homelessness

I live in one of the west coast cities, and while I am fairly YIMBY and think new development is very important, I think the most impactful part of homelessness is not solved by the solution proposed by this article. My take is that there is no societal framework to help people who have extreme mental disorders which cause them to act very dangerously and erratically. I think many in west coast cities are feeling increasingly unsafe walking around, which is making stricter approaches more palatable to local governments. But I think that feeling of danger is caused by people who (even by no fault of their own!) are actually dangerous to be around for mental health reasons. I think this is a topic we obviously avoid discussing frequently. But I think it’s at the core of the homelessness crisis. Yes, absolutely we need cheap housing. Yes, we need good programs to help people get back on their feet. But we also need to do something about severe mental health issues. (Hell, and even “minor” mental health issues.) It is simply not humane to allow someone to be a danger to themselves and others. And it’s especially not humane to just delegate them to the streets — which will never be sanitary or safe. So at a point, we will need to figure out as a society how to help these people, if we really want our streets to be cleaner and safer. And that means putting someone in a clean, decent place with medication… but it also means forcing them to be there if they experience severe enough issues. This is a really difficult problem to talk about and solve in a humane way, but I don’t see how we get around it.