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Notes -
IME, beggars hereabouts are either professional panhandlers, or conspicuously poor people who will ask for money to buy food but refuse offers of food. (My dad watched one immediately take the gifted money and rush into the liquer store, socks and no shoes). Even if the pros are bums rather than downtrodden, they at least know that gifted food means more of their alms go to something else. There's two axes, I guess—functionality and malice—and the problem is that the tails of each dominate, and the malicious above a certain level of functionality are better at pretending to be more benign.
Certain levels of disfunctional warrant institutional care. Above a certain level of malice, policing is required. The window of homelessness that is not covered by these has widened dramatically with the closing of asylums and the defanging of police, meaning that the tails kind of ruin it for the rest of the homeless, who already have it bad enough!
There are public long-term care facilities for sufficiently disfunctional adults in some areas in the US. Since I work at one, I am contractually obligated not to opine on whether or not people should use their services. I will say the state should just buy some Roombas, FFS.
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