People seem to imagine that what the homeless need is more stuff. Most of the homeless I deal with on a daily basis have more stuff than they know what to do with. A good amount of the garbage the church pays to have hauled away is stuff abandoned by the homeless 
The amount of sympathy for the homeless is a mile wide and an inch deep. By the time someone starts sleeping at my church they are the most hardcore homeless around. Mental illness. Drug habits. Complete rupture of their familial networks.
By the time they become my friend there is very little chance to reverse this death spiral. I've seen a couple people do it, but most follow a predictable pattern. Next will be an institution, usually a bad nursing home. A while there and then death. Some skip the nursing home.
City and state governments are trying to address the problem with billions of dollars. There are levels of homelessness that are helped by these programs, but the people that sleep here? no.
It will either need to be an involuntary program of some kind, or the program that catches them when all of their will is exhausted and they are catching their breath before the big sleep.
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