When Andre is caught stealing, put him on house arrest in his apartment, allow him work release with training and education for an appropriate job, when he violates the conditions of his gentler conditions, send him to jail for a while.

Remove people from society who steal instead of contribute, give them the opportunity and tools to rejoin productively repeatedly until they can.

But a lot of people do advocate for exactly that. They say that to solve homelessness we should just give people a place to live and that it's ultimately cheaper than any other solution (implying that all their other problems, such as addiction and criminal habits will just go away if they have a place to live.

Again, you are missing the point, or the people who are advocating that are misleading you. I do believe if you give people a place to live it is cheaper than any other solution. On 20 year time frames.

The homeless people who cause problems are now are, for a lack of a better word, fucked. It would cost tons of money to get these people the rehab, therapy, and education they need to reintegrate into society. It would be politically impossible (and probably financially unfeasible) to implement these changes. A better solution is just not creating these people in the first place. That is what housing first policy tries to achieve.

The vast majority of these people stories are the same - due to systemic poverty issues they weren't able to have stable housing and could not go to school or land a stable job. It was then they started petty crimes like doing drugs/stealing, and once they had a dependency on that lifestyle, they became a regular criminal over 10-15 years. Anyone who tells you they are going to undo 15 years of trauma within the next 3 years is selling you a lie.

I agree. These people are going to give birth to kids. How do you ensure these kids are not going down the same path?

Who out there advocates for "give them a house and them stop, that's it, nothing else" ? I've never seen that, ever.

EDIT: Never mind I misread someone's comment and it is too late to delete since I got a response.

I don't read it that way at all. They're very clearly criticizing the idea that it would.

Oops, you are right. I read that again and I misread it the first time.

There is a lot of evidence that it's very effective and cost-efficient just in practical terms, but that is not why I support those policies. I support them because everyone deserves a home. Choosing not to provide one to someone who needs it when we have the ability is vicious and immoral.

What they do after that isn't really relevant to be honest. I'm not trying to polish people into perfect rule following members of society and anyway homeowners get addictions and commit crimes all the time as it is. We don't generally leap to questioning their right to have a place to live though.

If giving homeless people houses solved no other problems it would still be correct and morally necessary.

people like Andre have more kids, creating new Andre's. you need to help people like Andre to prevent it from continuing. Also "too expensive" is a pretty poor reason not to help. regardless whatever is being done is not working, its time to try new things (and imho that is UBI so people like andre have enough to have shelter and food if they so desire, or whatever they need)

Children are significantly influenced by their parents, but not 100%. How many children of religious conservative parents become liberal atheists? A lot, because of their environment, and that's despite the parents deliberately trying to prevent it. I doubt that thieving parents would deliberately try to prevent their children growing up into good productive jobs.