Government subsidies for homeless Americans can be more hurtful than helpful, according to Michael Shellenberger, an environmental author. “We have a situation here where we’re literally paying people in the form of cash, welfare, housing, and other services to live in tents on the street, use hard drugs, defecate publicly, and commit crimes,” he said on EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program. Shellenberger said the problem begins with the word “homeless” itself—calling it a “propaganda word” that does not encapsulate what the issue is actually formed from. He said since the 1980s, progressive activists demanded more subsidized housing, attributing the cause of homelessness to a lack of housing, expensive rents, or poverty— “and that’s not the case.” The problem with using the word “homeless,” he said, is that it incorrectly combines two types of people—the mentally ill and the drug-addicted. While these two differences can overlap in some homeless individuals—the treatments …