Conservatives are going to be against giving out living space. So that kills any housing first policies.
The alternative has to be something that a politician can sponsor and be confident that in a few years when they are up for re-election that there won’t be any obvious fraud or abuse. Eg. If their policy is found to have housed a crack den then their political ambitions likely get killed.
This has the consequence that checks and balances and overhead has to be put in place. So we get a solution that is less cost effective with worse outcomes.
My wish is for government to come out and say we accept 10% fraud out of this program if we can house Y number of people. But yeh that won’t happen either because their political opponents will distort that 10% and say the government purposely threw that money away.