“Give them money and a place to stay!” I’m all about it, experiments show that works. But what about the recalcitrant homeless? The ones for whom a “leg up” won’t get it? The violent, mentally ill and addicted? Want those people near your home? Get some upvotes for calling me a NIMBY motherfucker. I stand by it.

Many who are poor don't want to interact with "the system" because they have been subject to violence and hypocrisy by those in the government.

If you have been beaten by police and a social worker, paid by the same government who paid the police who beat you, comes and says they want to help you for your own good, you are likely to know it means medication and pressure to not drink or use drugs (also backed up by police power once you are in the system that way). People, including poor people, are often very rational when it comes to happiness. A 50 year old man with no work history for 15 years, depression, and no money is not likely to start a normal family, get a normal job, and have normal happiness and may be much more likely to obtain the maximum happiness or reduction in suffering by being intoxicated. Additionally, psychiatric drugs often make the homeless more palatable to others, while increasing bizarre side effects like sexual side effects and twitching, without that much of an increase in happiness, and simultaneously make it harder to really feel good by getting high. Homeless people, despite being crazy and addicted, are not always irrational and most of them know that once a homeless person is classified by a psychiatrist and taking medications, the medicated person will continue to be pressured to do that and will lose autonomy and possibly even be forced to take medication in a coercive way.

There are intellectuals smarter than I who have done papers on how addiction is often a rational choice to maximize happiness.

The highly intelligent Finnish people realized that people weren't accepting help from the government because it came with all sorts of rules and duties and requirements and that a lot of expenses were going into programs that involved giving people services that weren't actually helpful when provided in a semi-coercive context to people who often have had bad experience with the government and society. So instead they made free housing, no strings attached, and then suddenly, the people in the housing wanted to get help and improve their lives. It's incredibly empowering to improve your life when an agent of the government is not putting pressure on a person to do it (with partial coercion) and people have their immediate needs met. People with immediate needs met can advance up Maslow's hierarchy of needs pyramid and exist in a manner that isn't just day to day survival.