>How do you help people in the grips of the perilous trifecta? First you need to ask these people if they want help, or is help really to assuage your own guilt. Also are your avoiding the uncomfortable cognitive dissonance that occurs when you come to grips with reality that people are different? As a society, do we want to force people into housing? Do we want to take away drugs from drug users? Drugs are a coping mechanism for boredom and hopelessness. Taxpayers don't want homeless people littering the streets with used needles and avoiding camps. Plus these people are dangerous. They are not like the rest of us. To "fix" these people's problems is likely impossible or extremely complicated and time consuming. To turn their lives around sounds great in the abstract. Reality, not so much. You can guess my prescription is to take the homeless people out of the city. We did that with the Indians. For some reason, we had no problems doing that.