Good intentions won’t fix broken people. Structure will.
I saw your post on Facebook. You asked where you could drop off your leftover spaghetti to help the homeless. I believe your heart’s in the right place. I’ve had that impulse, too.
A big meal, a full stomach, a moment of human kindness.
But can we take a step back and examine what happens when good intentions lead the way without a structure behind them?
Not a lecture.
Just a walk through a story we all seem to be living.
Imagine You're the Mayor
It’s Monday morning, and your assistant calls you. A tent just popped up outside city hall.
Now you have a decision to make.
Option One:
You call your local outreach team to make sure the individual is safe. You offer him services, shelter, recovery, and mental health counseling. But you make one thing clear: this is a public space.
No camping.
You draw the line early, enforce it gently but firmly, and stay consistent.
Option Two:
You decide to do nothing because no one wants to be seen as cruel. You look the other way. One tent becomes three.
Then six.
You don’t enforce the law because the optics are hard to manage. By Friday, the front of City Hall smells like urine. By the next week, people will avoid walking past it altogether.
And the message you’ve sent becomes clear: “Here, you can stay. Here, we won’t say no.”
That’s how it always starts.
The Bear in the Backyard
Let’s try a different example.
You live near the woods. One morning, a black bear shows up near your trash cans. You think, “Poor thing must be hungry.”
You leave out scraps. Sandwich crusts and leftover lasagna.
It comes back the next day and the day after that.
Eventually, it stops foraging.
It stops hunting, and it waits. One day, you forget to put food out, and it knocks over the grill. Another day, it tears apart your garbage.
Then, one day, it doesn’t just come hungry; it becomes angry.
It’s not that the bear is bad. It’s that you changed its expectations. You disrupted its survival rhythm by feeding it, but you didn’t help it.
Now, swap that bear for a man living behind a gas station.
He’s not evil. He’s hurting.
Maybe addicted. Maybe mentally ill.
Maybe both.
But when all he receives is free food and no expectations, he stops moving forward.
He camps.
He waits.
He survives without direction, without progress, and without a reason to change.
Chippewa Falls vs. Stevens Point
Let’s take this idea and apply it where it really matters: two real towns in Wisconsin. Similar size. Similar climate. But wildly different approaches to homelessness.
Chippewa Falls
If you visit downtown Chippewa Falls, you might wonder if the city has a homeless population at all. Clean sidewalks. Bustling storefronts. Parks were used the way parks were meant to be by families, dog walkers, and church picnics.
No tents.
No public urination.
No drug use in plain view.
And yet, Chippewa Falls does have homeless residents. They’re not in encampments: They’re couch-hopping, staying a night here, a week there. They’re unstable but not occupying public space. They’re struggling, but the city hasn’t handed over its sidewalks.
Why? Because the city doesn’t pretend that public spaces should become private shelters. Compassion exists, but so do boundaries. Help is offered, not imposed.
Order is enforced without apology.
Stevens Point
Now go two hours east.
Stevens Point. Another Wisconsin town. Roughly the same population. Very different tone.
Here, downtown sidewalks often double as sleeping quarters. Business owners have to hose down their steps in the morning. There are syringes in the bushes. Public parks have become encampments. Human waste on the pavement isn’t rare.
It’s a routine part of cleanup.
The leadership? Progressive.
The response? Passive.
Euphemisms take the place of action. “Unhoused neighbors.” “No wrong door.” “Non-judgmental space.”
The result?
The city has trained people to stay, not move forward. And the public bears the burden.
The truth?
People respond to incentives. When you reward stagnation, you get it.
When you remove accountability, you get chaos.
Stevens Point may think it’s being merciful, but in practice, it’s creating dysfunction.
Dependency Is Not Compassion
This isn’t about cruelty. It’s about restoration.
People aren’t helped by being handed a meal and left in the elements. They’re helped by being redirected, treated, and expected to recover. That means no camping zones, real treatment options, and the courage to say: “You can’t stay here.”
Every city that has reversed its homeless crisis, Salt Lake City, parts of San Diego, and even elements of Fort Worth, Texas, didn’t do it with spaghetti on a paper plate.
They did it with structure.
Enforcement.
Consequences.
“Kindness” that enables someone to spiral out of control is not kindness. It’s slow destruction.
The Behavioral Blueprint
Humans, like all creatures, adapt to their environments.
Set expectations low enough, and people will meet them.
Remove accountability, and you remove momentum.
The longer someone is allowed to live in dysfunction, the harder it becomes to climb out.
When cities refuse to enforce public order, they don’t just create messes. They dismantle motivation. They teach people to settle into a state of survival. They normalize tent living, public shouting, and drug use in broad daylight.
That’s not equity.
That’s failure.
A Better Model
Want to help? Don’t just feed.
Intervene.
Advocate for cities to adopt treatment-first policies. Support programs that require accountability and offer measurable progress. Stop praising leaders who pretend that “tolerance” is the same thing as a plan.
Good cities are already doing this. In some places, mobile triage teams are deployed to camps that offer housing placement, detox services, and therapy coordinators. But those programs only work when they’re backed by law enforcement that says, “You can’t stay here. But you can come with us.”
The formula is not magic. It’s expectation.
Support with structure. Help with boundaries. Compassion with courage.
Final Thoughts
So, to the person who asked where to drop off food: you’re not wrong to care. We need more people who care. But if that’s where it stops, you’re just replacing wild instinct with dependency.
You’re feeding a bear and hoping it stays tame.
If you want to help someone, don’t just fill their belly. Fight for a plan that gives them back their mind, their body, and their dignity.
Food is temporary.
Dignity is permanent.
And no one finds it at the bottom of a takeout container.
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