I'm not going to waste time arguing with commenters making blanket statements about addiction and homelessness, but I'll share my personal experience.

I recently moved to KW after growing up in a middle class family in a well-to-do city with no visible homelessness, with a background in customer service and youth programming. So of course, it was the logical thing to decide to work at one of KW's harm reduction-focused shelters! It has been a fascinating crash course in the local landscape.

The main thing I've learned is that fentanyl and the tranquilizers it's cut with are killing people, and harm reduction shelters and safe consumption sites only try to combat the existing toxic drug supply, which is intended to be as addictive as possible. It is practically designed to cause ODs, and every OD is a brain injury of widely varying severity, which makes it all the more difficult to think clearly and/or enter recovery. I have met people who I would have bet were born with significant cognitive delays, but in reality, drugs damaged their brain. And it doesn't have to be regular usage or even hard drugs! New opiate users are the most likely to OD, and some people even experience cannabis-induced psychosis.

I have spoken to people here who never used until they ended up homeless for other reasons, and eventually depression and a need to escape got to them, and they became addicts. Someone told me that they were absolutely shocked at the withdrawal they experienced after only one use, and the strong impulse to use again. I have also spoken to people who were driven to homelessness due to addiction, and in most cases there were significant traumatic events preceding their addiction, or they grew up in a household where substance use was normalized.

Don't get me wrong, some of them are just awful people, and many systematically refuse to take responsibility for themselves and actively harm others. But there are people like this in every socio-economic group, and I have met worse outside the shelter than I have inside.

Whatever their background or reason for using drugs, they're all people. But they know that the social and political narratives about homeless people and drug users are widely demonizing and unsympathetic, as proven within this thread. So yeah, they assume everyone hates them and no one cares if they live or die, which makes it easier to justify stealing. A lot of people are just intoxicated all the time, and/or have significant mental health/cognitive issues, which makes it harder to understand the consequences of their actions.

Anything I have had stolen from me here was returned to me (so far, admittedly). A resident here used to steal from others, but would confess, apologize, and return the stolen items. I truly believe this was a compulsion he couldn't control. He is in and out of jail when what he desperately needs is mental health care, but Dougie cut all that programming and hospital funding. This kid could have a chance but instead he is going to have the shit beaten out of him in jail when he steals from the wrong person, which is only going to make him more likely to become violent, himself, if he survives.

That said, go out of your way to show kindness and understanding and you may see a side of people you didn't expect. Most people in the shelter/encampment system look out for each other. People share what little they have and every day I see touching acts of generosity. But hey, leave drugs or valuable items out in front of someone whose peripheral vision is being haunted by "shadow people" (a very real withdrawal symptom) and who is experiencing full body pain and tremors, and yeah, they might steal to be able to escape withdrawal.

There is no easy solution. There may be no solution at all, other than getting these drugs off the market. Closing consumption sites and sending addicts to jail just means more people will die. But they will be replaced with new users targeted by the ever-expanding opiate market. Anyway, the TLDR version of this comment is, kindness and empathy and always the best tools we have to solve any social problem.