This will have to go somewhere...
But what is "this"? I first thought you wrote "they," to which I would agree, perhaps as follows: those who are addicted should go to detox and hospitals, those who are mentally ill should go to hospitals, those who are criminals (drug dealers) should go to jail, those who are poor should go to permanent housing, those who are hard-to-house should go to supportive housing, ...and so on.
Unlike Coreyburger (I believe) who dumped on Richard Leblanc's idea for the habilitative facility (farm) in Saanich, I think facilities like that farm, which focus on supportive programming and therapy, have a real place in terms of restoring people's health and dignity. Do shelters do that? If they did, why do so many homeless people rather sleep on the street than check into a shelter? It's not just because they can't bring drugs into the premises -- it's often b/c they consider the shelters unsafe. If the homeless themselves think the shelters are unsafe, it makes you wonder.
I'm just wondering, if we're interested in
ending homelessness vs just
managing it, whether it's such a great idea to throw good money after bad.
If the facility were a hospital or a supportive housing proposal or an affordable housing proposal with (what's that term?, aggressive community something?) a component that has real support for the chronically hard-to-house, I'd say, go for it.
A shelter just seems like a strange step if there's not much else in terms of mental hospital or detox facility etc. to go with it. Designing in a courtyard so that the people who use the shelter are less visible from the street doesn't address that issue.
Maybe I'm missing something, but what happened to more enlightened and aggressive approaches to homelessness? Building bigger shelters seems like a no-brainer solution, but is it?