Yes but 1 is a huge, massive, often insurmountable political battle because there are enough single-issue voters who will turn on any politician who threatens to enable “undesirable” types to share their neighborhood. And 2 is blocked by people who think their aesthetic preferences are more important than others ability to survive (often the same people as blocking 1).
It’s not really the crime that matters, at the core, but rather the perception of “other”. The single-issue anti-housing people don’t want police in their neighborhoods, they want police in other people’s neighborhoods keeping those people out of the “nice” neighborhoods.
Sadly, most people do in fact want more housing for people who are less well off than them, even if it means they have to run shoulders with strangers. But these are the people who work and don’t have time to show up to community meetings about a new apartment going up, and don’t usually decide who to vote for based on neighborhood aesthetics.
Because the problem is mostly political, most of the solution is political as well: identify, train and support local politicians who will vote to build more housing, and help them write new laws that do so. And convince them (by consistently winning at the ballot box) that the anti-housing crowd is loud but not actually large, so there’s little danger in losing their votes.
It’s not really the crime that matters, at the core, but rather the perception of “other”. The single-issue anti-housing people don’t want police in their neighborhoods, they want police in other people’s neighborhoods keeping those people out of the “nice” neighborhoods.
Sadly, most people do in fact want more housing for people who are less well off than them, even if it means they have to run shoulders with strangers. But these are the people who work and don’t have time to show up to community meetings about a new apartment going up, and don’t usually decide who to vote for based on neighborhood aesthetics.
Because the problem is mostly political, most of the solution is political as well: identify, train and support local politicians who will vote to build more housing, and help them write new laws that do so. And convince them (by consistently winning at the ballot box) that the anti-housing crowd is loud but not actually large, so there’s little danger in losing their votes.