> A very large assumption lies here: >Housing programs aimed at improving the condition of the underemployed, Forrester warned, “increased unemployment and reduced upward economic mobility” and would condemn the underemployed to lifelong poverty.

What he's referring to here is the poverty trap created by means tested assistance programs. You give someone housing provided they don't have hardly any income, but now they're stuck. Even if they now have more time to look for a job, they can't actually accept it or as soon as they do they're no longer eligible to live there and it causes them to become homeless again. And just because the job pays enough to disqualify them from the assistance program doesn't mean it pays enough to afford market rate housing there.

Especially when the job comes with costs -- you have transportation costs to get there and back every day, if you have kids you now have to pay for childcare because you're working instead of taking care of your kids yourself, you may lose eligibility for other government programs like food assistance at the same time, etc.

At best it means taking a $10/hour job would in practice net them something like $2/hour, which isn't much incentive to give up half your waking life commuting and working. At worst it actually costs more to take the job than it pays. So they don't take the job, never get any experience or contacts that could get them a better one, and are stuck in poverty indefinitely.

To get rid of that you have to get rid of the means testing, but giving everyone money exclusively for housing would only inflate housing costs for everyone. So what you need is for it to be unconditional all around, i.e. a UBI.

> I think we can see the evidence there are benefits in examples at the furthest end of poverty - homelessness. Many cities found that it is cheaper to house the homeless and provide them social services, than to ignore them and treat the effects of homelessness issues (police and jail time for crimes, from desperation or untreated mental illness, emergency medical services for treating overdoses etc).

It's important to distinguish between poverty and mental illness. If you have someone who is incurably mentally ill and has no family to care for them, it can make sense for the state to put a roof over their head rather than have them assaulting random people in the street all the time, because their situation isn't likely to change. What to do with people who can't ever be productive members of society is a hard problem.

People who are in poverty only because they're unskilled or unemployed is a completely different situation. What they need is economic opportunities, not assistance that gets cut out from under them as soon as they clear the first rung of the ladder.

And government housing is especially nefarious because it raises the price of market rate housing, so when you lose eligibility you're dumped into a market you can afford even less.

> This is not even getting to the question of the purpose of government - it is not a business trying to achieve maximum profit, so why should it be seeking to drive out low-income residents?

There is a case to be made for people living where they can afford to live. If you require government housing in Manhattan, it makes housing in Manhattan more expensive for everyone else, which prices out middle income people. It's also a crap use of government resources, because they're paying Manhattan housing costs to house lower income people that the people paying the taxes to fund them can't even afford themselves. And what's so wrong about having the people who can't afford to live in Manhattan just live in New Jersey? If that's what people at the 30th percentile income have to do, why shouldn't people at the 3rd percentile as well?