No Room at the Inn

This article by columnist Ben Shapiro wins my award for most clueless take on homelessness of the season.  It is ironic that it appears in the same week that we celebrate the birth of Someone who had no place to lay his head.
From the article:

"....The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that Americans have a right to sleep on the streets, and that it amounts to "cruel and unusual punishment" under the Constitution to levy fines based on such behavior. That court decided that writing a $25 ticket to people "camping" on the sidewalk is precisely the sort of brutality the Founding Fathers sought to prohibit in stopping torture under the Eighth Amendment.
"....It is worth noting that being homeless is not a "state" of being. It is not an immutable characteristic. It is an activity and can certainly be regulated. That doesn't mean the best solution is prosecution of those living on the street -- a huge swath of homeless people are mentally ill or addicted to drugs and would benefit from better laws concerning involuntary commitment or mandatory drug rehabilitation."
"But to suggest that cities cannot do anything to effectively police those sleeping on the streets is to damn those cities to the spread of disease, the degradation of public spaces and an increase in street crime."
"….But here's the problem: Cities that have attempted to provide increased housing for the homeless, despite some early successes, have seen their problems return."
"Cities like Seattle and Los Angeles have attempted to build new housing. It's been an expensive failure. It turns out that the carrot of housing must be accompanied by the stick of law enforcement. If you cannot compel drug addicts to enter treatment, or paranoid schizophrenics to take their medication, or those who refuse to live indoors to do so, homelessness will not abate."
"As it is, the Supreme Court has damned America's major cities to the continuation of the festering problem of homelessness. And that problem won't be solved by judges who attempt to force social policy through deliberately misreading the Constitution, or who believe they are championing "freedom" for tens of thousands of Americans who are seriously mentally ill or addicted to drugs."

I find it odd that an article about homelessness has plenty to say about mental illness and addiction, but nothing about poverty, or high rents, or lack of affordable housing.  It is true that 50-70% of homeless people (depending on which set of statistics you read) suffer from mental illness, or addiction, or both.  But I would venture to say that over 99% of them suffer from poverty. Some of them are the working poor; they have a job but don't make enough to afford housing. Some of the homeless are children. 
Shapiro writes; "It is worth noting that being homeless is not a "state" of being. It is not an immutable characteristic. It is an activity and can certainly be regulated."  In other words, he is saying that it is a lifestyle choice. The article mentions levying a $25 fine to people violating laws against being homeless in a public space. Which, if they had it, would only impoverish them further. 
Shapiro is right about one thing, that a court ruling establishing a constitutional right to be homeless does nothing about solving the problem.
This quote from 19th century novelist, Anatole France, is apropos: "The law, in its magestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."