I don’t think this is cruel at all. This is badly needed to fix broken incentives. A lot of the west coast cities (SF, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver) have serious issues with homeless drug addicts taking over public spaces, causing blight, committing property crimes, acting out in public, etc.

All the taxpayer money spent on nonprofits and random government programs have had little impact since far and mostly look like corrupt grift. There need to be new consequences and deterrents.