I understand and appreciate the points: drugs, noise, fights, theft. But government seems to think that these things are created by encampments, rather than merely concentrated where the needy gather. I think (?) it's the same poverty problem everywhere, so why not finally try to solve the problems where they're easiest to reach? Why insist on "looking busy" and distributing people elsewhere? It's like being angry at birds, so you implement a system for destroying nests. That policy doesn't end birds; it just moves them elsewhere. (Ignoring the conservation egg/reproduction issue for the moment.)

Cost is a different matter. It seems like the same neoliberal capitalism issue that crops up everywhere. With automation, we're on the verge of sci-fi levels of abundance. Or we could be, if we'd stop implementing policies that try so hard to concentrate the wealth upward into the fewest hands possible. Why is housing so expensive? Here in the Twin Cities, most housing is owned by corporations of some variety. Profit. That's why it's expensive. The perpetual effort of the rentier class to extract wealth for having something rather than doing something. I understand that the demand/supply equation can theoretically be complicated, but we've allowed the want of something (housing, medicine, etc.) determine cost rather than the actual measurable cost of production. Target that. Crash the markets of greed. Constrain them forever with law.

There are only a few things that are not renewable in timeframes relevant to human lifestyle. Potable water is one of them, with sanitation issues being "the other half" of that equation. Cities/communities without systemic solutions are terrible. Greenhouse gases are another problem. We are constrained by some limits, sure, but greed is something that we do to ourselves. Our systems treat it as if it can be supported through indefinite growth. I desperately want a grand Reset Button to recalibrate the measurement of our needs and the actual resources needed to provide them.