In my view, from observing the homeless who frequent my Waikiki neighborhood, roughly half can and should work. The other half are so unhealthy that they can't, at present, work, or be responsible for a free room. Those people need a social worker to find them and offer them live in treatment facilities. They might need substance abuse rehab, mental health care, in any case, not providing such a costly program for them is not free. We pay the costs of inadequately dealing with chronically unhealthy homeless people.  We pay for police to shuffle them around, or arrest them, emergency room visits, damage to businesses and tourism. Not to mention we suffer the loss of their health, the loss of their ability to live productively.  Rather than paying for costs of letting people suffer, let's pay to make their lives better.  I imagine that police will love being relieved of dealing with homeless issues. So will the public.