As I got out of my car to head into the 7-Eleven at Powers and East Yosemite avenues at a quarter to nine on Tuesday as the overnight lows were headed toward 29 degrees, I got a whiff of the distinct smell of marijuana smoke.

It was coming from behind an outside storage area of propane tanks where two homeless men were bundled against the cold slouched against the vacant space that once housed a tanning salon.

On my way out, one had moved closer to do the door of the convenience store.

I braced for the inevitable.

“Got money, dude. It’s cold.”

To be honest it had been a while since I have been hit up for money by a homeless individual.

I’m talking about individuals that clearly look miserable and seemingly desperate and not those commandeering high-traffic spots such as the main exit from the Costco lot where they stand almost exclusively in fair weather with the most forlorn facial expression they can muster, holding a piece of cardboard telling you they need to pay the rent, are hungry or they have kids.

I normally do one or two things in such situations.

I either keep walking and reply with something equally as predictable as “not today” or something in their mannerism makes me think there is a slight chance I’m not being played.

Then they might get a dollar or two.

I know, I know. It enables their chosen lifestyle. And when the occasion arises, I often find out I’ve been played as I’ll come across the same individual days later plastered out of  their mind.

And what honestly prompts me to drop my guard and go against my default instincts that whatever I might give them won’t be going toward basic nourishment is the fact I’ve never seen them before and they appear to be relatively new to the street.

Given I live in a neighborhood that is within in a mile radius are pockets of the most high-profile illegal encampments in town, some of the favorite overnight spots for those living in vehicles to park on the streets or in parking lots, a number of long used urban cubby holes that provide cover, plus the city’s emergency homeless shelter it isn’t all that hard to inventory a lot of homeless faces.

It also helps that I do much of my shopping in the area, take daily jogs, and also work within a mile of home. We frequent the same turf, so to speak, on a daily basis.

That said, I had never seen the guy who called me “dude” in his pitch.

I would have kept walking and said “sorry, not tonight” but his use of the word “dude” caught my attention.

I’ve been panhandled hundreds of times. And if I’m ever referred to by a pronoun in the ask it is “sir” and not “dude.”

What caught my attention wasn’t a perceived sense I was being disrespected but his use of the word “dude” made it sound like he was a newbie.

Being told by those that work with homeless that the longer someone is on the street the more comfortable they become with it, I decided to respond to the homeless guy’s request for money that he made while offering the Homer Simpson style weather report  that it was cold.

“You do know there is an emergency homeless shelter in Manteca?”

I uttered those words knowing full well he probably did. The homeless aren’t dummies.

I didn’t anticipate a vile reaction. I thought I’d get a non-sensical response at worst or — if all of the planets had aligned — I might be asked how to get there if my wildest hopes came true. Instead, I ended up hearing the purest three words he could have uttered.

“Don’t want to.”

There you have it. The key to Manteca’s homeless solution courtesy of the 9th District Court of Appeals backed up by the United States Supreme Court’s refusal to hear an appeal of their ruling.

The solution? Build the shelter and then deploy — read that hire adequate police staffing — and you can apply a full-court press to clear the streets of illegal camping and no longer be forced to turn numerous public places such as the sidewalk in front of the Manteca Library into de facto sleeping areas daily from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m.

It is clear those that are at the emergency homeless shelter being financed — at least so far — by pass-through federal and state funds  by the City of Manteca and operated by Inner City Action at 555 Industrial Park Drive aren’t 100 percent sold being on the street where you don’t have to follow most rules of a civilized society.

Yes, there are mentally ill as well as those that have crawled so far down the rabbit hole of substance abuse that are not lucid for long periods of time. There are ways that those working with the mentally ill to get them off the streets can succeed in doing so but it is a long and tedious road.

Pressuring those that partake liberally in the consumption of alcohol or drugs or simply don’t want to do what is required to stay sheltered but all want to play exclusively by their own rules is a different ball game.

The courts have made it clear once a jurisdiction has a shelter in place with available beds, they can pressure the homeless that have been bestowed the legal right to basically exist to either go there or to keep moving on.

It is a right based on the indisputable fact there are certain things one must do to live such as sleep.

But as with all rights it is not absolute. The homeless when they stake out public places must do so within legal parameters just like a city can’t legally exclude them from all public places. There’s fine tuning to that concept.

However, what matters is a jurisdiction such as the City of Manteca can keep the pressure on homeless to a degree that they can’t just set up shop where they please if there is a place provided for them to go that has an available bed.

While the court didn’t dictate it, clearly having resources attached to those beds to work with the homeless to get them off the streets strengthens the legal position of a city to get aggressively tough with sweeping streets, parks, and other locales.

The best-case scenario is the homeless problem becomes significantly more manageable and less obtrusive with making Manteca more livable for the sheltered and unsheltered alike. That means a greater number of potential homeless never take residency on the street as there is a navigation center to “navigate them” back to being able to shelter themselves.

 The worst-case scenario is the homeless problem becomes significantly more manageable and less obtrusive with Manteca more livable for the sheltered and those who are unsheltered except the homeless that steadfast hold onto the belief they are free-range humans and as such rules don’t apply to them.

In that case, Manteca with a shelter and a zero-tolerance enforcement of the solution carved out by the 9th District Court of Appeals gets a reputation among the homeless throughout the region as a place they have to play by the rules or else they will constantly have authorities firmly and respectfully pressuring them.

Those that “don’t want to” follow the solution for not having a place to bed down for the night in Manteca can opt to live with authorities breathing down their necks when they opt to sleep where they want when beds are available at a shelter or find a town that’s more accommodating,

This column is the opinion of editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of The Bulletin or 209 Multimedia. He can be reached at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com