>Letting them fend for themselves is not admirable, or "empowering", it's cruel. They should be involuntarily committed to mental health and addiction intervention programs. Unfortunately, we in the US dismantled our public health infrastructure back in the 1980s (which roughly coincided with the start of the homeless crisis).

The self-pitying, po-faced uselessness of Enlightenment liberalism, summarized. 'We should be doing this, but we can't, so what can we do? Definitely Reagan's fault, though.'