Piper, How many is "a lot" dealing with mental health issues?  Maybe 5, 10 0r 15%?  Nevertheless, as a whole they are well enough to establish elaborate camps, steal, beg on street corners, get drunk, take drugs and otherwise survive in squalor on public land.  These aren't people slipping through the cracks of our mental health systems.  These are people who have made a choice to live like this.  Maybe they are unemployable because of illiteracy or no work ethic. But if there are no consequences for that behavior more of that is what we get.  My empathy for the squatters was exhausted when I stepped in a pile of human feces along a trail.