You're stuck in a false dichotomy. There's nothing wrong with adopting all the housing reform you want. But we also (additionally not instead of) need something immediate to treat the acute, highly localized problem of mentally ill and drug abuse in encampments. If in fact you have not been to one (e.g. Venice Beach a few years ago) and seen the enormous encampments and destruction they inflict on nearby property, it's hard to understand. Maybe you have?

This isn't about American exceptionalism, because either A) other countries don't have this problem (great!) or B) they do and all the "do it like they do" was just proven wrong as a solution to both the problems or C) they did have this problem and it was solved by these policies - great! The immediate intervention of getting the worst offenders off the street is a temporary solution and housing policy wins long term.

But no matter what there's no reason to push back on two heterogenous solutions because it includes more than just your favorite one.

I don't think it's fair to equate this problem with just "the poor", and it's certainly not fair to equate "the poor" with homeless, mentally ill, drug abusers, or serial offenders. Those are the folks I'm referring to, not "the poor" as a general economic class. That should be obvious.

It's most certainly not fair to equate the homeless with "serial offenders". Most homeless people are simply poor. Most of the middle class are "drug abusers".

But whatever you gotta tell yourself to excuse the mistreatment.

I believe you have never been to or around the situation I'm talking about. That's ok, but let me assure you it's a very very small minority of drug users and homeless. Nobody is proposing anything for those two large groups. Just a few very bad locations that get overlooked because of these kinds of misunderstandings which absolutely do need something different.