Homeless in New Hampshire

Homeless people in New Hampshire have to deal with the winter. I have often wondered what they do when the snows get deep. In the Live Free or Die state, there is a strain of thinking which is in essence, libertarian, which says, "Live and let live. Let the homeless be."

This morning New Hampshire Public Radio began a series on the homeless in New Hampshire and they played a sound bite from the mayor of Manchester, a Republican who is running for governor, who said, "There are people who simply want to be homeless, despite everything you might want to do for them. They just want to defecate and urinate in public."

So there you have it.  Would we have a problem with homelessness if the homeless refrained from 1/ Defecating in public places  2/ Begging?

There is an aesthetic problem for many people.
There is a psychological problem for other people, who look at the homeless and it scares them. There but for the grace of God, go I. 

Other people simply say to themselves: These people don't have to be homeless. I don't have to feel sorry for them and I certainly do not have to do anything for them because they want to be that way. They'd rather beg than work. 

It's an extension of that old, "The slaves were happy being slaves. They got good food and lodgings and didn't have worry about anything. They were good children and taken care of as such."

It was heartening to hear a chief of police  (in Concord?) who said, "Just because you're homeless doesn't mean you've given up all your rights."

I would really like to know more about what I assume is a diverse population of homeless people. Presumably some of them are simply nuts. I've had some interaction with homeless people who were clearly mentally deranged. But my son, my communist son, has taken homeless people out for lunch and got their stories and some of these folks were simply struck by bad financial luck, often compounded by illness in the absence of health insurance. 

I'd like to know more, but I wonder if there is any source in the state of New Hampshire, which even cares to look. There are government web sites but in none of these do I find answers to the questions I really burn to know.  For that you'd need an "ethnograph," as the anthropologists say.  The last place I saw any comprehensible depiction of the homeless was, you guessed it, "The Wire."