A Policy That's Helped the Homeless

From Atlanta, via Marginal Revolution:



Added later: this article in the Chronicle states that Mayor Newsom suggested the idea in SF, but it was ridiculed. Why? The article cites a survey stating SF as the seventh-meanest city to the homeless for (among other things) citing people for sleeping on sidewalks. Gasp! What's meaner to the homeless, enabling the many mentally ill people on the streets to persist in their unhealthy and often fatal lifestyle, or encouraging them to escape it, with the same carrots and sticks the rest of us deal with every day of our lives?