Should local governments be allowed to clear homeless camps without also offering alternative housing to all homeless residents?

👍 Yes (39%) – "For everyone's safety and security people should be permitted to shelter in designated areas managed by the government, qualified non profits, or shelter businesses. The areas should be subject to regulation just like any business that must comply with health department standards."

• "Having worked with this population for years, my experience has been that a significant portion of the homeless population routinely refuses shelter options due to the rules in place."

"Homelessness is out of control in the western US. I'm from the Netherlands, where the government cleared up the homelessness issue several decades ago, through a combination of carrot and stick methods. I live in LA now and, although I'm quite progressive politically, believe the current approach used in the western states focuses too much on incentivizing good behavior exclusively."

• "Sanitation and protecting citizens and businesses from theft and drug use should have been the priority all along. We know the homeless have posed dangers to the public, it's been proven they do, and this needs to end. Establishing homeless encampments away from cities would be an appropriate response. Ninth district cities need to stop catering to those who are dangerous to the public."

"Finding solutions to the problem of increasing homeless encampments is a terribly complicated one. Of course finding the roots of what is causing this rise is important. But in the meantime, huge encampments are a serious problem, not only for the businesses and community members around them, but for the residents themselves."

👎 No (45%) – "Where are they to go? The problem would just be put on another area. Spend the resources in tiny home communities with some social services to help them participate positively in society."

• "These government officials are doing what they've always done- if there's a problem, they sweep it under the rug and forget about it. They want to remove homeless camps from the picture but they don't want to do anything to solve the source of the problem. The fact of the matter is if the government wasn't sending billions of our taxpayer's dollars to foreign countries, we might actually have the financial resources to actually fix the problem itself."

"Homeless people are still people. Cities and the corporations residing in these cities need to solve the problem…. Affordable housing. I wouldn’t be surprised to see more homeless people as the cost of putting a roof over your head is almost impossible. I have a career and had to move in with my grandma to be able to afford to live, and I live in rural Minnesota."

• "It is the city lawmakers that directly or indirectly allow "investors" to buy up properties and run up rent on citizens. When citizens can no longer afford to be housed then the local municipalities should bear the brunt of the situation by dealing with the encampments that result from the homelessness. Fix the problem by having better policies and providing for the homeless amongst us. Real estate is out of control in this country."

"While I recognize the desire to clean up the streets from encampments, to do so without a plan of how to provide housing would be inhumane. Also, governments don't like to spend money, so once they cleared the city, I'm not confident they would take the time to solve the homeless problem - out of sight, out of mind."

• "Local governments should be leading their communities to a better situation that eliminates the need for people to congregate like this. Find the root causes and work to fix them. Sweeping away the evidence of homelessness does nothing to fix the problem and is not reflective of America’s founding principles."

🤷 Unsure/other (16%) – "The biggest problem keeping the current in place is migration from where people became homeless to cities that may have too many already. With that being said, I would like to see more college dorm style buildings to house people in dire straits. Having a safe room, no matter how small, is a huge boost to morale. Bonus points if the walls are actually thick enough to sleep next to noisy neighbors."

• "I don't think governments should be allowed to clear homeless camps without alternate housing but I do think they should be allowed to relocate the camp to another place if it is a problem for traffic, businesses, public safety, or the homeless themselves. Governments don't and shouldn't have a lot of control over where those end up taking root but if they need to be moved to a safer location and can't also be provided alternate housing, the government should be able to do that within reasonable measure."

"I think it might be necessary at times to move people from specific locations, but not clear the camps altogether. Not sure if that is considered as providing an alternative. But say there is a homeless camp in front of a preschool, I think it's probably a good idea for somebody to have to authority to say that camp has to move. However I do tend to agree that taking somebody's temporary shelter away, when they have no other means of shelter can be considered cruel and therefore fall under the protection of the 8th amendment."