This is fallacious. The push against forced deinstitutionalization was made because of the systematic abuse within that system. The role of any modern society is to offer people who need it treatment and basic support (and that should include housing, of course), without impeding their basic human rights.

>The push against forced deinstitutionalization was made because of the systematic abuse within that system.

That is a quintessential example of "throw baby with bathwater". You've replaced regulated institutions staffed with credentialed professionals (medical and otherwise) providing safe and structured environment and healthcare, with mentally ill people living in tent-cities and squalor, surrounded by crime, prostitution, abuse and illegal drugs and exposed to the elements.

Tell me again how you've guaranteed 'basic human rights' with your replacement for institutional care? And don't tell me that any problems in the 60s and 70s with institutional care, could not and would not have been improved over time. Instead, the policy to dismantle state and municipal institutional care destroyed countless lives that would have benefited from said care.

>The role of any modern society is to offer people who need it treatment and basic support (and that should include housing, of course), without impeding their basic human rights.

And people who aren't capable of making the best decisions for their lives due to mental illness - how does that factor to your equation of 'basic human rights'?

Again, this is redirection. Mentally ill people squatting in tents is not a problem everywhere, only in places where nothing was done to replace the asylums, and where people were just abandoned in the streets. Better social programs were created in most places, like supervised housing, regular social worker visits, "Housing First", etc. Putting people in what is in many ways worse than a prison, for the "crime" of suffering a mental illness, was not right, and most developed countries actually chose to improve the existing system instead of just "throwing the baby with bathwater". If the place where you live is full of mentally ill people living in the streets, the solution is not to return to the system that existed before, but to create a better system to replace it.

Wait, so are you in favor of rounding up people in buses and sending them, against their will, in "institutions" for "their own good"?

Yes. 1000x times YES. We're not talking about institutionalizing just anybody who is on the street. We're talking about institutionalizing people with severe mental illness who cannot make those decisions and are living on the street. Are you not for that?

Most of the homeless in the US don't fit into this category of severely mentally ill.

A quick google shows that at minimum 25% to 30% of homeless have serious mental illness, and almost half have some mental illness (50%-60% of homeless females suffer from mental illness). There is overlap with drug addiction, but drug addiction tends to represent around 40%-50% of homeless. It's also necessary to differentiate temporary homelessness and long-term homelessness. I didn't find any numbers, but I suspect long-term homelessness is dominated by mental illness and drug addiction. That's not to say people cannot fall on hard times and end up homeless, but that population tends to bounce back within weeks or months and also requires different policy solutions as well.

On a side note, have you walked through homeless encampments in cities like San Fran, or Seattle? It is obvious that mental illness and drug addiction is rampant.

However way you slice it, mental illness represents a huge part of the homeless population. Policy wise, they are treated no different than people who end up homeless due to economic circumstances.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_and_mental_health

I believe it is more like half at any given time in the US if you would like to support the term "vast majority" feel free.

Between drug addiction and mental illness, it's not 'more like half', but hey - let's say it is - doesn't it bother you that the current policies are created with the assumption that homelessness is an income problem? That, therefore, 'more like half' of the homeless population is not helped by the billions of dollars being spent on combating homelessness?

25% of the homeless are seriously mentally ill according to the most extensive survey ever done by HUD.

35% have a substance abuse problem.

Believing that these populations don't overlap involves some pretty magical thinking. Logically between 40-50% have one or the other problem and 10-20% have both problems.

This doesn't however paint a complete picture because its a chicken and egg situation. Did people end up homeless because they were ill or on drugs or did they end up ill and or on drugs after they were on the street.