You, in what sounds like a reasonably-well off position, struggle with the 1.3M home costs, etc. Imagine how it must be to be surrounded by 1.3M homes and mult

You, in what sounds like a reasonably-well off position, struggle with the 1.3M home costs, etc. Imagine how it must be to be surrounded by 1.3M homes and multi-thousand dollar apartments when you're broke, not well paid, and can barely afford any of it? Homelessness and crime are both things that people are much more likely to resort to in a society with wildly inequal distributions of wealth than in one where everyone is in a similar place. So we could build more jails and prisons, throw more people in them. Punish people very harshly for stepping out of line as we continue to worsen the ability of the less-wealthy/less-paid to thrive. "There's no excuse for resorting to crime," etc. Criminalize sleeping on the street so that we can toss them somewhere too. We could build massively more. That seems much more humane. But a lot of people don't want to do that! So we could push people out, lower the demand. That would put pressure on prices and open up housing... nobody wants to do that, though! We just sorta "unintentionally" do it by choosing not to do anything else - let the problems push people away on their own! The crime isn't a direct symptom of government dysfunction, it's a symptom of the ever-growing divide. The government dysfunction is trying to have your cake and eat it too, but that's not actually just the government that wants to do it - tons of citizens want to both keep housing scarce and less dense and get rid of visible homelessness. What do you think the government alone could do that wouldn't result in their being rapidly voted out by people who don't want change?