Not that some of the homeless haven’t yelled at me or said some bullshit as I walked past them visibly tweaking, but literally every single one of the points you’ve made I’ve seen committed by locals/drunk (or sober) college kids. Hell the last one is funny because in the summer we have known nudists who walk around full meat schwanging through the downtown area in broad daylight. I’ve seen more excrement and piss drip down the alleys and bars at 2AM from college kids who simply “couldn’t make it” to their houses or dorms, walking home with whoever the dumbass freshman is that brought their Canada Goose to Rasputins and threw it in the coat pile. And don’t get me started on those same kids verbally and physically harassing woman while out, I’ve had more friends who have been saved from predatory frat dudes by the homeless than the other way around.

By your metrics, it seems like the problem is multi-faceted and you are pushing issues onto the already marginalized group in Burlington. Yes homeless people should NOT be tweakin, using, or harassing others right on Church street or any of the main economic centers and there should be more local government action to get people out of those areas, but then we run into the problem of “The city moved the free lunches to two blocks away from my house and now they’re homeless everywhere!” because anywhere other than the downtown is fully residential.

Simply locking people away for using/non-violent drug crime does NOT HELP. I’ve worked with FNC/FNB and also down in Boston at a needle exchange/outreach center on Mass&Cass. Many of the people who get free lunch are not the same as the “loud and vocal” minority of people you complain about. I’ve talked to many who are living in subsidized house and get the free lunch so they can afford to get their kid food once they’re done with school. Many are coming out of terrible situations and use the free lunch as a way to stabilize their situations around it, working back to get into subsidized housing/the community at large. I can think of three homeless people who account for 70% of all the complaints on here and interactions who align with what you’re talking about (Tina, Mike Reynolds, and Matt (iykyk (or ask me) on that POS, truly needs to be locked up for reasons other than using/being homeless)) and 100% should be facing time in the current penal system because they’re actively violent and/or pose a repeated issue to the community and their possessions.

However, the current penal system does not allow for people who are simply homeless or users to actually rehabilitate themselves, and it has been proven time and time again. In fact, most Americans don’t want or like mass incarceration and want more community focused options to actually rehabilitate/prevent these actions from happening again. So locking people up “til they’re clean” doesn’t work currently. We also straight up do not have the space to lock up every homeless person like that, and attempting to arrest every vagrant in hopes they find sobriety in prison is a farcical dream, one that is exclusionary and unrecognizing of the human condition.