In the real world the jails are for holding, the prisons are for convicted criminals and the homeless people (most of them anyway, because not everybody that is homeless is derelict, and the addicts) get whatever help they need. Because we actually can afford it.
Can you, though? And for how long? With the current policymaking and demographic and economic trends?
There is an argument to be made that the European social experiment has largely been indirectly funded by the largesse of the American hard-and-soft power strategy. As we're moving away from that (for various reasons, most idiotic), there is a question as to how it will persist.
(This is not meant as trolling--there's a real existential question here. A starting point is an attack on that argument: what is the "natural" expenditure on defense versus what you can get away with America's force projection? How much social funding is derived from that delta, in the most generous sense? Maybe it's a red-herring.)
If we are speaking about housing specifically, at my part of the swamp it's subsidises by more affluent people (they way our atheistic christian beliefs command) and the general idea predates the rise of America anyway. Dealing with homeless people and the like the European way is also /cheaper/ too, IRRC.
Not having crack junkies shit in my front and backyard and also not worrying about it is tax money well I believe.. It's up to the village council to decide to send coppers to beat them or medics to provide some free hits on a condition of having to take a shower.
