And if the inmates did work but their experience was neither forced nor concentration or gulag, then you'd be all for my idea? I seriously doubt it; there's an agenda at work with you that has little to do with actually helping people.

"Simply giving homeless people housing" does nothing but brush off the real problem. That sounds like "do more of what I know hasn't worked" to me.

Let me guess what your deep fear is. How about this: you believe if we don't placate the downtrodden masses with wealth transfer programs then we'll eventually have an uprising and they'll take all my stuff and kill me and my family or something like that.

You know what causes anger and uprisings? Not simply poverty. If that was the case, you'd have 3rd world countries constantly in revolution. The jealousy and violence and revolts stem from relative wealth inequality. Rich people living and flaunting their wealth in proximity to relatively poor people. Well, we've effectively segregated ourselves in the states by class - we no longer mix classes here. So, have no fear, you're not going to get mugged by your impoverished neighbors unless you're one of those chaos-loving hipsters that is in the process of gentrifying a poor neighborhood (a.k.a. displacing the poor people.)

Now that I have allayed your fear, let me propose that your wealth transfer concepts can't "fix" the poverty problem because it allows people to stay stuck in their mental/cultural situation. If you don't fix the culture first, you're throwing good money after bad. I want measurable improvement in the homeless situation and we're clearly trending the wrong way in big cities right now. Of course there needs to be more public housing, but the culture problem needs to be addressed first.

I'm not sure how great the revival of the Victorian workhouse would be, but yes, the involuntary imprisonment and forced labor aspect of your plan is far and away the most objectionable.