THOMAS D. ELIAS The ultimate goal of city and county agencies trying to solve Californiaâs homeless problem is to get this transient populace into permanent housing. But it turns out many of the homeless donât want the kind of permanent units that are becoming more available as local, state and federal governments devote ever more money to getting them off the streets. No one knows precisely how many of the stateâs approximately 161,000 homeless prefer to keep sleeping in tents and under tarps, as about two-thirds of the California homeless do each night. But dealing with the encampments so common along sidewalks and beneath freeway bridges can often seem like playing with silly putty: When authorities squeeze encampments by shooing occupants away and cleaning up messes they leave, the camps often reappear somewhere else within days, like silly putty oozing through the gaps between a childâs fingers.