- Is there evidence that they would be less safe than makeshift homeless communities? My instinct would be to assume that homeless people in California are already congregating somewhere, and that those areas have increased crime risks. Does public/low-income housing make it worse than the current situation already is?
- Should we weigh the overall loss in safety for middle-income residents against the overall safety of poorer or homeless residents? My instinct is to say that the homeless population in California is part of its constituency, and that their needs should be considered equally with middle/upper income residents. Suppose overall crime in an area is increased, but the area simultaneously becomes safer for the homeless population itself. Is there a ratio between those changes where we would say, "it's worth the increased crime."?
I would assume California is similar since most people who live there are less likely to give things to them every day.
Public housing should be mixed into other neighborhoods, or (as my city does) developers should be incentivized to operate a certain percentage of subsidized low-cost housing in otherwise normal apartments.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/america...
Hannah Rosin studied this for The Atlantic (which is a progressive, left-leaning publication) and concluded that this simply spreads crime around making overall crime rates even higher.
"Physically redistributing the poor was probably necessary; generations of them were floundering in the high-rises. But instead of coaching them and then carefully spreading them out among many more-affluent neighborhoods, most cities gave them vouchers and told them to move in a rush, with no support."
"Left" and "right" tend to be about specific political positions and values, but an entity that's "liberal" tends to orient less around specific positions and more around meta-values that are about approach (and have a lot in common with western academic and especially post-enlightenment thinking), but will accommodate a variety of other values into discourse, just refereed by the meta-values. So, depending on what you define as "left leaning", you might find examinations and even cases for it (alongside conservative leaning points) in the pages a liberal publication, but they'll be grounded in liberal approach and will likely not be alone.
And that's why you'll see things like "Why can't people hear what Jordan Peterson is saying" in the pages of the Atlantic, even though Peterson seems frequently hostile to the left and vice versa, or discussions like "The Two Clashing Meanings of 'Free Speech'" that aren't value judgments about people like Milo Yiannopoulos.
You can mix low-income housing into larger complexes, creating mixed income communities. This does a lot to help create role models and show what life options are available and possible. It helps, in some ways, to break the cycle of poverty. This comes with the cost of utterly destroying the concentrated, focused support networks often found in less well off areas - they do not survive the dispersion.
The alternative is to prioritize existing communities. To focus on preserving the social ties and mutual support networks they know and trust. The downside is that while this improves the immediate circumstances, it preserves the concentration of poverty.
There's no ideal solution here. It's just a question of where your policy priorities lie.
It makes sense to put those less well off around more affluent folks to help keep criminal activity from pooling.
Cabrini Green showed that these large scale public housing projects are unpoliceable.