You would have to make benefits conditional on satisfaction of mental health treatment compliance to get anywhere.

I think you could follow a carrot and stick approach to reduce the largest harms of homelessness. Get caught using drugs or alcohol in public, or harassing people? Jail, with deferment into a mental health program (which is also available to all homeless folks). Stay in the mental health program, and you get housed, for free at first, and then a small percent of your income once you get a job.

> it's a small financial burden compared to the unsustainable growth of infrastructure.

American cities aren't really growing their infrastructure that much (that's one of the problems), they are just maintaining what they already have. But ya, we will spend billions on a link from Ballard to West Seattle here, and it won't be ready until sometime after 2040.

> Whenever I see comments like this, I always note there doesn't seem to be any broader solution than 'ship them somewhere else and make them someone else's problem'

That's because while the problem is national, the resources expected to solve it are local. Since the problem is also mobile (as anyone taking a greyhound bus to Seattle could see), at least not being a preferred destination for the problem is a valid strategy. Shipping it off is also valid, but mostly the chronic homeless will go places where they can survive (looking for better weather, generous social services, and police that aren't going to throw them in jail for doing fent on the bus).

> So shipping it off somewhere else, or at least not being a preferred destination for the problem, is a valid strategy.

Is a valid local strategy. Not a national one. The cities are just responding as best they can to the brokenness of the national (lack of) response.

I'm not sure how that differs from my response, but sure. You can't really blame these places for dealing with it as best they could, and the cities that don't do that (Seattle) are only rewarded with an increasing share of the problem.

It only differs in a bit of emphasis. You're emphasizing that the local response is reasonable; I'm emphasizing that the national response is a catastrophic failure. (You said that "the problem is national"; I just thought that point was worth emphasizing more strongly than you did.)

I thought that was obvious, but sure. National problems can't be solved at the local level, so only national solutions should be seriously considered as having a chance. In the meantime, localities need to do what they need to do to survive.