> Proposed solutions that don't involve incarceration should be ignored as unserious and unrealistic.
Incarceration has been our primary approach for dealing with drug addiction and mental illness over the last 42 years. It is extremely expensive, with cost-per-inmate figures ranging from $15K-64K depending on the state, with California being the most expensive. I don't know of any public policy experts, regardless of their political leanings who consider this an effective approach.
I think people fail to recognize that part of the push to "decriminalize" drugs and homelessness isn't necessarily bleeding-heart progressivism but calculated austerity: Prisons are full. We want murders, rapists and violent criminals locked up in them. We cannot do that if they are clogged up with people whose primary offenses were being mentally ill and/or drugs.
I understand that California in particular has been more lax the rest of the country, but coming from the midwest our hard-ass drug laws didn't prevent meth and then heroin from ravaging both urban and rural communities.
So if you do want to simply lock these people away, I think you also need the political will to do two very important things:
1) Provide evidence that spending $15,000-$65,000 to incarcerate a homeless drug addict will produce a better outcome than spending those same public tax dollars on something else that could also benefit society and/or the individuals in question.
2) Raise and invest tax money into prison infrastructure to house these people. This will likely mean hiking taxes and/or cutting them from things like education.