Huh? Anyone would choose to be homeless? The people who like to call it "Voluntarily Homeless" are not homeless themselves - far from it in most cases.

But I know what they mean. Some people choose the behaviors that lead to their becoming or staying homeless. Raging temper, pathological dishonesty, drug or alcohol addiction - such behaviors can lead to the loss of home.

We used to have homes for these people, they were called mental institutions. Then one day an enterprising TV news reporter decided to do an expose segment about how bad the conditions were in the mental institutions. Whether things were that bad or not, the upshoot of it was that the government discharged most of the patients and got out of the mental health business. Now the former patients were out on the street where they became known as "mentally ill homeless".

Now the community at large has to deal with the people whose behavior choices lead to their being homeless. The laws are inadequate to these tasks but the police do the best they can with what they have. We should help the police all we can. We certainly should NOT be repealing laws that the police are using to combat drug use, public intoxication, vagrancy and what have you. The recent "spitting decision" comes to mind.

"Voluntarily Homeless", of course, is far different from people who are homeless because of a job loss, bankruptcy or a physical incapability to work. We need to get a lot of work done on the involuntarily homelessness problem, especially where families are involved.