FYI, I'm not American, and live across the pond. While we definitely have our issues, we don't have the large scale homeless camps America seems to have.

I find it horrifying that it apparently got that bad to begin with, let alone the shoulder shrug attitude of "We might as well live with it. It's very slightly less cruel than just kicking them out again and again."

It was the Victorians that realised it's actually cheaper to just provide a safety net, rather than deal with the costs of letting people suffer (police, theft, security, damage etc). You are literally paying more, in taxes, to make them suffer than just doing the humane thing and helping them.