Across America’s streets, the homeless epidemic is claiming lives, fracturing families, and eroding public safety. Often deeply intertwined with mental illness and addiction, it has become a humanitarian crisis that traps vulnerable individuals in cycles of dependence and despair while destabilizing the communities around them. This crisis has been worsened by policies that elevate the notion of “freedom” over timely, life-saving intervention.

Recent events make the consequences of that choice unmistakably clear. Continuing on the current path is neither humane nor responsible. (RELATED: Former Nickelodeon Star Tylor Chase Back On The Streets, Friend Says)

Consider what unfolded in New York City over the holidays. A woman with a documented history of serious mental illness and homelessness was released from psychiatric care, only to purchase a knife hours later, then repeatedly stab a mother changing her baby in a store’s restroom. Thankfully, both mother and child survived. But we must be clear that this was not a random act of violence — it was a foreseeable failure of a system that confuses discharge with success and autonomy with safety.

In Honolulu, another homeless individual perished from advanced cancer that physicians later said was treatable with timely intervention. While untreated disease ultimately took his life, it also robbed society of the human........

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