Salt Lake City, liberal for Utah but not exactly a leftist utopia, proved a solution that nearly ended chronic homelessness in their city. The solution is simple and cost-effective, when compared with basically every other city's approach: give homeless people homes. While chronic homelessness is basically a fact of life in major urban areas, SLC saw reductions of 91%. And they did it with lower costs than any other program.
The sad fact for Seattle is that we actually pioneered the program, as Housing First, before we abandoned it for programs that are far more expensive and far less effective. It was a small pilot program, but in its scope saw similar success. But Seattle, despite having a fairly left-leaning population, is not administered with the same leanings. One of the tent cities you mention was specifically named after mayor Greg Nickels whose policies on homelessness were to undermine programs designed (albeit poorly) to help, and to send cops out to slash up people's tents and confiscate property of the inhabitants. He explicitly called for shipping homeless people *out* of the city, hardly a sanctuary.
Like you, Nickels complained of "handouts". As if taking the only remaining resources away from people will promote their success. The effect is predictable: people who have nothing left to depend on find alternatives. This is the "criminal/drug activity" you speak of. You can't expect people with the fewest resources in society to thrive as you kneecap them. And you can't make them go away.
What you can do is do the fiscally conservative thing: choose a solution that works, costs the least of all existing programs, and eliminates huge swaths of bureaucracy and corruption. Give homeless people houses.
By the way, Sawant is hardly representative of the city council. The fact that you have trouble distinguishing her from the rest of the city leadership, despite distinguishing her from Sanders, shows how little you understand about how this city operates.