Governments are rethinking the provision of public housing

IN THE PAST ten years the homeless population in Los Angeles has risen by 50%. In New York it is 60% up over the same period. San Francisco is widely thought to have America’s worst homelessness problem. Just metres from the headquarters of Twitter and Uber, people lie in the street, stupefied, or defecate in front of the passing traffic. The term “housing crisis” is bandied about too readily. But it is an apt way of describing what is happening in America’s most prosperous cities.