That sounds closer to what I would expect of such a program, but it apparently works in Utah. Is there something that story leaves out? Are the approaches different?
What is cheaper, having to replace a microwave once a month, or sending a homeless person to a hospital once a month? And once a month is probably an underestimate, if anything.
How we currently treat the homeless is a disaster, both in terms of outcomes and cost. "On a monthly basis she does hundreds of dollars worth of property damage, shoots up heroin once per week, has ten times the chance of the general population of being raped, and costs the government thousands of dollars" is genuinely a massive improvement over the status quo: people just don't realize how shitty and expensive the status quo actually is. One of the benefits of starting from really low is that things that otherwise are shitty end up looking like sunshine in comparison.
San Francisco spends something like $150 million a year in direct tax expenditures on solving its homelessness problem, to no observable benefit. It seems obvious choice to me that it'd be better to totally disregard any rights of the homeless, offer Stockton or Kansas $100 million a year just for the right to set up a staffed homeless complex within its borders, and call it a day.
Keep in mind that the Mormon church funds about half of the homeless program in Salt Lake City. They also donate free food to anyone in need. I would argue that the outcomes (for both homeless and non-homeless residents) are better in SLC than SF, but the total amount spent per homeless person is not radically different between the two cities.
When the above is combined with the fact that SLC has fewer homeless per capita, it's easy to see why the SLC method looks like the easy way out.
