On Friday Melbourne lord mayor Robert Doyle announced through the Herald Sun that he would this week take to council a scheme to ban people sleeping rough in the CBD.

In short, the lord mayor would ban homelessness within his municipal fiefdom.

Rejoice, fellow citizens: we will no longer be forced to confront our own privilege and fortune. No longer will we be brought face to face with daily reminders there is a housing crisis and that crisis has a human face.

Leaving aside the fact there is no council meeting scheduled until February 28 (which makes this announcement look a little like a PR stunt designed to cruel day-after-day of negative tabloid front pages), Cr Doyle's announcement raises a practical question. Where, exactly, does he think the homeless people lining Flinders Street Station will go?

Just two days earlier, Cr Doyle had sounded much more sensible when he said that if people were forced away from the station they would only move to other rough sleeping hot spots like Treasury Gardens and City Square.

"There are cities around the world where they simply bundle homeless people up and ship them out," he said.

"I'd hate to think that we were ever that sort of city. We need to address the problem, not just do a cosmetic clean up."

In 1954, Queen Elizabeth visited Shepparton. According to local legend, authorities put up hessian screens along the side of the road, so the young queen would not be offended by the sight of an Aboriginal camp that had established on a former rubbish dump along the causeway between Shepparton and Mooroopna.

The people were still there, but queenly sensibilities were unscathed.

A similar farce is now being proposed in Melbourne.

If Melbourne City Council approves the rough sleeping ban, the ban would apply (according to the Herald Sun) to the entire CBD.

This would alleviate the problem flagged by Cr Doyle earlier last week – that people would simply move to other CBD rough sleeping hot spots – but it wouldn't prevent people sleeping in the sliver of park near Goschs Paddock, which abuts AAMI Park, is ominously close to the tennis, and is part of Yarra City Council's territory.

Asked whether she was worried about Melbourne City Council simply shifting its problems to her council area, Yarra mayor Amanda Stone demurred. She had not seen the detail of Cr Doyle's proposal, she said (in fairness, none of us has), but it was better to work collaboratively than to pass blame.

"I do know that we are seeing increasing numbers of people sleeping rough in Yarra too," she said. "It's very troubling in a prosperous society. There are strong drivers [of homelessness], obviously. Homelessness isn't something that people choose. It's not a law and order problem, it's a social problem."

As my colleague Aisha Dow has pointed out, the problem is affordable housing, or a lack of it.

The irony is, there are already practical moves underway that could go some way to helping Melbourne's rough sleepers, and the council, find a way out of this mess.

The Andrews government has pledged more than $600 million for additional housing and homelessness support, and the council has allocated $2 million for outreach and housing services.

But trying to tackle the structural problems takes time. And in the meantime, a mattress shanty town has established along Flinders Street Station.

Police already have the power to take action against people openly taking drugs, or urinating in public, or harassing passersby. And as Victoria Police Superintendent David Clayton pointed out last week, it's not illegal to be homeless. Rather than criminalising disadvantage, we have a duty to help people who have nothing.

Last year, the Council for Homeless Persons released a statement responding to another tabloid attack on beggars in Melbourne's CBD.

Repeated studies had shown, the council said, that many people sleeping rough were on the streets due to traumatic childhoods, including sexual abuse or family violence, had long-term mental health and physical issues as a result.

Homeless Law, the council said, had done research showing that of those begging in the CBD, 54 per cent had a mental illness; 73 per cent were experiencing long-term unemployment and 23 per cent were victims of family violence.

What we are seeing is not people "pretending" to be homeless so they can smoke a bong and beg strangers for spare change (has anyone actually stopped to think about how humiliating and alienating that would be?), but the daily reality of life for the most dispossessed in our society.

The Council for Homeless Persons says the only thing that will fix this is to provide long-term, stable, low-cost housing and the support services people need to be able to maintain that housing.

"Approaches like this overseas have led to the virtual elimination of street homelessness", it says.

Isn't that something we could all support?

Bianca Hall is a Fairfax media staff columnist.