[UncleMeat]

> A problem with this whole discussion is that "homeless" means people that are sleeping at friends' houses etc, but to the average citizen when they're complaining about quality of life issues caused by the homeless they are referring to the subset of homeless people that are "unsheltered".

It is true that a lot of people complaining about "homelessness" are actually complaining about personally seeing a homeless person. But homeless people are also people. Our society owes them dignity too. I believe that what you describe is not a problem with the discussion, but a problem of empathy among people who would just as happily have a homeless person die as house them, since both do the job of keeping that homeless person away from their walk to work equally well.