>made the area less safe than when there were people regularly walking around.

Homeless people are people though. (??)

If the homeless encampments are there then there are probably people who live there that are walking around.

To be honest I don’t think that homeless encampments had much of an effect on the homicide rate, nor do they make an area inherently less safe— there’s no reason to be afraid of homeless people, they aren’t some boogeyman—they’re no more violent than the rest of us.

You may not like them aesthetically, but they are not dangerous. It’s not the homeless who are running around shooting each other over petty gang conflicts.