In Vegas, the good mayor has decided to take bold steps to curb the homelessness problem. It is a burgeoning population, visible almost everywhere you look. She proposes making it illegal to “camp out” or sleep on the street. Ooh, I don’t know. If these folks were capable of not “camping out” I am thinking they would get jobs, get clean and sober and reassemble their broken minds.

Easy.

And that’s the problem. Right? It’s not easy. The same way we went wrong in criminalizing drug abuse, we go wrong in thinking punishing homelessness will prevent homelessness. The tendency is to turn away from deviance in a way that makes us feel cold and hard. But because we can’t fix them, it’s easier to pretend they’re not there. Ignore them at every intersection where they walk dangerously close to and between cars to scrimp a handout.

Like Elizabeth Warren, I have a plan for that. If your sensibilities run toward squeamish, look away. Bring back insane asylums. Yep, those horrid institutions dramatized in movies like “Snake Pit” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest”. These were places where the crazy uncle or skittish auntie were sent away so the delicate amongst us would not be tormented with their presence. What I am suggesting is a place funded philanthropically to shelter and treat the mentally ill population. There is no other way realistically speaking to repatriate these individuals into the general population. And as with any of the other medical conditions which afflict us, not everyone will be cured. The homeless population is reduced by treating with the goal of reversing mental disease and more directly by removing them from the streets.

Tom Steyer, Bill Gates, Zuckerman, Buffet come to mind as representative members of that one percent club who hold ninety percent of the wealth. Put your name on a building.