The Mission has empty beds every night, therefore we certainly can enforce our no camping laws. Besides, while people have a right to sleep, they don't have a right to take over and privatize our very best public spaces and leave them trashed.

Our local friends of homelessness seem to think that supporting shanty-towns and being staunch apologists for anti-social behavior is a good thing since it attracts ever more homeless here (where we have nearly ten times the national per capita number of homeless). 

Many people, including myself, strongly disagree. I'm fully supportive of creating and funding substance abuse clinics and providing subsidized housing for those who get clean and attempt to participate in a positive way in society. For those who wish to sit in the park shooting up and drinking while trashing our riverfront, I have other ideas of how we should treat them. People are defined by their behavior, and some have defined themselves as animals.