The shelters in many places are already full from what I understand and have seen.
Secondly there are two kinds of homeless populations and one was rather small before this predicament brought on by COVID, though the impact of the spread of the virus has also revealed a lot about the state of half of our citizens financially, mentally and emotionally, as well.
One group is the stereotypical collection of people with issues brought on and exacerbated by the stress of both their mental states and the tendency to be unstable along with people who have various kinds of debilitating drug addictions that are either long-term or a result of suddenly being on the streets, and the people who are products of the incarceration nation we have become over the decades.
The other group is growing now and that is comprised of the once employed and stable people who are suddenly thrust into the melee of street life without any idea of what that entails and how to survive under those conditions, (like spending every single day in a form of survival mode). That comes with a steep and potentially severe learning curve.
While I feel for the people who have been abandoned in so many ways what with the closing of mental health facilities long ago, (the prisons usually make up for that) and I don't moralize about addictions as a failure of will or character, nor do I consider ex-felons and even petty criminals, who are often discriminated against in so many ways and even jailed for "victimless crimes" the second group is not typical.
In fact, they often have a professional background, more education and that makes them standout in the shelter environment as they strive to adapt quickly.
For myself, shelters are a very bad environment with many risks and even the theft of personal items is common. Attacks and verbal abuse abound, even if unprovoked. People who have been in dire straights for a long time seem to have a tendency to behave in aggressive and even violent ways as the attempt to work out their issues via projection and other means. Also, the shelters do very little to end the churning cycle of poverty, instability and insecurity, so it is only a makeshift way to give them temporary shelter without addressing the actual issues involved. That is a travesty, but it gives the housed a sense of something proactive being accomplished and can even put the matter out of sight.
My first encounters with shelters, the Salvation Army, etc. was so bad that I have chosen to live in a tent when I can since it is actually safer and I think that says a lot about the experience so far. Very often, there is a stereotypical , moral and judgemental bias that people overlay on homeless people in general, still even though more and more people are teetering at the edge of catastrophic displacement today.
We have also placed all the services we used to have in the hands of the police mostly. They are the primary solution at this point and that is what contributes in ways to their stress levels and their abuse of power, as well.
This crisis is systemic and driven by a NIMBY effect as well as the profit over people approach that we now see very clearly unfolding all around the country. Affordable housing is scarce and no new ground is being broken for building it, (which means it may be a year or more before we could even start to grapple with the actual, demonstrated solution: housing FIRST!
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