I grew up in foster care until at about age 14 I took off on my own.
Most people have no idea how close they really are from being homeless. Unless you have a wealthy family most people without a lot of savings are 2 or 3 bad months away from losing everything especially if they have a lot of debt. I don't regret my experience as I feel going through some real turmoilis the only way to build real character. Also I know that if I needed to I could take off with nothing but a small pack and a good pair of boots and survive both in the bush or in a big city. It also gave me a perspective on what can work for social programs and what does not.

Some people all they need is an opportunity at the right time and others are total write offs and the best you can do is to house and feed them so they don't scare the tourists. Some people who are drug addicts need very little help to change and others will never quit and the best thing forthem is a harm reduction program where we just give them the drugs they want. In canada and europe we have found that when you give heroin addicts either heroin or methadone they can hold a job and take care of there kids just like anyone else. Another advantage of that is it is very very cheap compared to treatment programs that don't work on them anyway.

Basically if someone really wants to get clean you can't stop them and if someone does not want to get clean you can't make them and it is a waste of time and money to try.