Do you honestly think that these people want to live as they do?  Granted there are some people that like camping instead of a homeless shelter.  Some of these people are so mentally ill they are incapable of doing much of anything for themselves.  My brother is homeless in Tampa, FL.  He has been trying to help himself.  He worked for a year at 69 years old at an assisted living home that included room and board, but when he got pneumonia and had to be hospitalized for a month he lost his job and his home!  The county down there has a 5-7 year waitlist for subsidized housing.  There is no affordable housing to speak of.  There are those people, I have learned, that are provided housing and then up and move out.  Normally this occurs with the mentally ill.  Forty to 50 years ago we used to have mental institutions that kept these people.  All of them close up so a person needs to go to treatment and then after a week they are dumped out on the street, only to repeat the whole scene!