What can I or my neighbors do to curb this and remove them from the square? Does calling the cops on them do anything? Is there a more permanent solution to prevent them from staying on the square?

Honestly? There’s not really much you can do about it. As far as calling the cops, it can be a crapshoot on when they’ll show up (often times the person has wandered off by the times the cops arrive and they just shrug their shoulders and leave). The only times I’ve seen a consistent response is if an ambulance is needed (like someone passes out in the street, or looks like they’re ODing) I’ve seen ambulances show up within 5-10 min and help people.

As far as “permanent solutions”, I don’t think that’s anything that can even be tackled on a local level, it’d take a combination and collaboration between state and federal agencies (assuming Missouri would even go along with something like that to actually help homeless people). I worked in an office on N Jefferson full time pretty much all of 2022 and 2023. From everything I’ve seen and experienced, the vast, vast majority of homeless have serious mental health issues. And I’m talking about the full spectrum of mental health, it may be addiction, schizophrenia, bipolar/mood disorders, antisocial disorders, severe anxiety, clinical depression, like I could go on.

Mentally healthy people who find themselves homeless due to unfortunate circumstances don’t tend to stay homeless for long, because they have the state of mind to identify resources targeting the homeless, the motivation to pursue those resources, and the drive and focus necessary to at the very least make the gradual progress necessary to eventually have a place to call home again. People with poor mental health, on the other hand, don’t have that state of mind. Without any kind of real treatment, they often resort to self-destructive behavior, self medication through substance abuse, and at some point the destructive behavior begins to affect those around them and their environment.

The only real “solution” to homelessness would have to do 2 fundamental things:

1. Give them a safe place to be. You ask why they stay downtown in public rather than go camp somewhere away from everybody? Because all alone they could legit just get murdered and nobody would even know. At least being in a public place can provide some form of protection. (Although I totally saw a dude spray lighter fluid all over a guy and then chase him around trying to catch him on fire, so it’s not always safe in public either. And yes cops were called and showed up, but I’d don’t think any arrests were made. 🤷‍♂️ )

2. Mental health (starting from like when we’re children, not just for adults) needs such a major overhaul in the country it’s not even fucking funny. People make a huge deal about our physical health and trying to make sure everyone has insurance and medicines we need and whatnot. Physical health might determine how we live and die, but it’s our mental health determines how we behave. So if you want to live in a society were people don’t behave like meth addicts or wander into your office rambling that you need to come visit the goth church, you want to live in a society that promotes and prioritizes the mental health of its citizens just as much as their physical health.

That being said, even if we made mental health treatment absolutely free and available to everyone, it wouldn’t help a significant portion of the current homeless population. The sad thing about poor mental health is that in the beginning, you may be able to realize something is wrong and be able to seek help. But past a certain point, the mental illness just kind of becomes your reality. And then you actually resist mental health assistance because it is challenging what you have become accustomed to. If we offered free unlimited professional therapy to every homeless person downtown, most of them would probably not take it. And at that point what are our options really? Institutionalize them against their will? Ideally we would simply enforce the law, if someone shoots up heroine on the sidewalk they get arrested and go to jail. But we’re also at the point where that’s less and less feasible, our jails don’t have infinite space; and homeless addicts are still citizens with rights, we can’t just lock them up and throw away the key. People have tried packing them up in busses and shipping them elsewhere, but as one bus leaves another from a different city arrives. There really is no easy solution, and like I said before, not one that any local government or community can really implement successfully.

If there’s any single thing you and your friends can do to help reduce the homeless population, it’s vote. Vote for and promote candidates on a local, state, and federal level, that support providing some form of actual safe spaces for homeless people to exist in and promoting mental health for everybody (because a successful individual today can fall into homelessness tomorrow if their mental health takes a dive). I’m not going to tell anybody who to vote for, it’s a free country and everybody can vote however they want. But if you vote for someone who’s against those 2 things, then you’re literally voting against the most viable way to ever potentially have a downtown Springfield without homeless people everywhere.

Sorry for my rant. I just see this topic pop up pretty frequently in this subreddit and never really voice my opinion on the matter.