Rent control harms everyone. Economists have a consensus that it's a terrible reaction to high housing prices. Most things done to help the poor have unintended consequences worse than the problem they are trying to solve.
The benevolent people of many large cities have vastly expanded the drug and homelessness problem with their good intentions. They hand money directly to people on street corners; participating in the well-being of drug dealers and demise of the addicted.
We don't have crazy wards for the crazies anymore either. Somehow it's more humane for them to sleep on sidewalks naked and poop in public.
The problem is way more complex than "the poor don't have enough money". That's a symptom of many complicated problems, not a problem itself. If that were the problem, then the solution would be to simply give money. That doesn't work.
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