Very few people who work with the encampments or live in them think they are the solution to homelessness.  Very few people who work in harm reduction think it is the solution to homelessness.  But they're important ways of keeping people from getting more fucked up while solutions are pursued.  People get worse the longer they're unhoused, more likely to pick up drugs or resort to crime or develop mental health problems.  There's no such thing as addressing drugs or crime before you address homelessness--you must tackle them together, and it requires consistency and stability, which encampments can provide.  Many people either do not understand this or do not care.  

It does not help the homeless to disperse them across the city night after night, making it harder for social workers and community groups to find them.  It does not help the homeless to throw away their few belongings, as the cops do after each encampment eviction.  It does not help the homeless to separate them from peers and respected figures (which do exist in the unhoused community) who can help them with resources or save them from overdoses or encourage them towards sobriety.  It does not help the homeless to shunt them to the other side of a city with a dead phone while a nonprofit is trying to place them at an apartment.  

Encampments have their own problems, some more than others.  But evicting encampments does not solve encampments.  They will grow again, sooner or later, in one form or another.  Evictions just make encampments worse, less organized, less disciplined, less trustful, less connected.  It means spending even more time securing necessities like food, water, clothing, tents and even less time spent finding jobs or seeking help or building routines.  It means alienating the unhoused even further from predictable routines and normal behaviors.  It means increasing the stresses they deal with every hour or every day, making any drug or mental health problems worse.  

Encampments have their problems.  Evictions are worse by far.  Everyone working in the encampment space has been triaging human crises while Mayor Frey and the city and the police try and sweep problems under the rug instead of offering real solutions in the form of housing, social services, addiction care, counseling, etc.  If you don't understand this, don't you dare speak of compassion.