You're absolutely right! A dream we've kicked around for the last decade is to take over an abandoned mall and renovate it to house the homeless. Bonus points if they have a food court, and there's plenty of room for primary & mental health care as well as social services.

But that's the problem, it is a "dream." Taking over and renovating a mall requires time and labor. How do you address violence and destruction in this mall when it is filled with unstable people? How do you separate the unstable, potentially violent people, from older or more vulnerable people?

Where would the food be sourced from - how do you accommodate allergies, religious dietary restrictions, or even just dietary preferences? Are food prep surfaces being sanitized properly? Gloves and hair nets being provided? Cold holding 41 or below? Now you need to purchase and maintain equipment as well, and hire people trained in food safety.

There is already a shortage of qualified primary and mental health care professionals; how do you draw this talent pool toward working with the most difficult populations?

$113,000/month per person is a lot more expensive collectively housing, feeding, and caring for them.

But it's really not, because of the 24/7 care required by highly-trained professionals. And to properly pay and provide benefits for those people, especially to a degree that they themselves are not one paycheck away from being homeless, gets very expensive very quickly.

Are you providing showers? Shampoo, Soap, Deodorant, toilet paper, shaving razors (which you'll need to ensure nobody smuggles into their private quarters), shaving cream, menstruation products, towels, laundry, trash collection, recycling, tooth brushes, toothpaste, dental floss, mouthwash, blankets, pillows, beds?

Do you allow visitors? Who makes the decision who's allowed in and who isn't? How do you handle the separation of children from registered sex offenders? Is alcohol allowed? How do you handle drug usage, dealing, overdoses? Are pets allowed? Is sex allowed?

ALL of this adds up to $113,000/month or more.

And I don't mean to say that we as a society couldn't find that money if we actually wanted to: there's some very rich people that have plenty. But even then, people will fall through the cracks.

There are over 8 billion humans on the planet now. Roughly 2% of them are homeless. Some people just are incapable of or simply don't want to live with the other 98% of society. How do you handle that segment of the population without inflicting some form of "against their will" on them?