But who is gaining anything if the "drugged out, violent, no desire to improve" folks are living on the street instead of some government provided (or paid for)

But who is gaining anything if the "drugged out, violent, no desire to improve" folks are living on the street instead of some government provided (or paid for) permanent housing? The point of the Finnish project and similar approaches in other countries is to first get people off the street, because it is much easier and cheaper to resolve any other issues within the context of a permanent home. Yes, some of the beneficiaries will still take drugs, be violent, etc. But they would be that way (or worse) if they were homeless and it actually makes it cheaper and easier to deal with these issues if they have housing. So you loose nothing by making housing available even to the worst or most intractable cases but you open up a whole world of opportunity for those homeless people, who just need a permanent place to stay to get their live back in order. The worst approach to this type of problem (which most US cities seem to have taken) is to basically say "as long as we do not have a perfect, magic solution that resolves the homelessness problem instantly, we'd rather keep all these people living on the street, because heaven forbid we pay even one dollar of tax payer money to someone who turns out not to be 'worthy'". Frankly it is a barbaric and dumb view of the world. Every government program (just like all private investment and enterprise) will include some waste and misadventure. Just accept that its not going to be a perfect experience for everyone involved and commit to constantly evaluating and improving the approach.