Welfare and bloated municipal budgets go hand in hand., just one group of parasites is more successfully milking the system the other.

You could cut welfare costs by 30% and still feed, clothe and house the needy quite well, just you won't be doing it with the profit margins of slumlords and convenience stores in mind.

I have seen it around here, a lot of ex-convict homeless purposefully discouraged from gainful employment then get put on the dole and become "clients" of the system of heavily managed welfare, typically in tightly supervised apartments where nobody cares to be competitive in pricing because the government is paying the rent. Nearby food resources are then ripoff convenience stores trying to keep profits ahead of shoplifting losses, then food banks and meal centers pick up the slack when that runs out. You might as well just install chow halls with a voucher system, but oh no, restaurants would complain.

More arguments in favor of planned communities. Even on food stamps, if five very poor people actually pool resources and put it on groceries, shopping smart, they can easily feed guests and have steak about as often as they would want.

Zone more campgrounds and trailer parks, stop subsidizng slumlords and falsely propping up low value to square foot real estate with subsidized rent profit margin for absentee landlords.

You can't sustain upper middle class appearing standards of living on a combination of minimum wage compensation for workers where they end up with less of their own pie than those who don't work and those who pretend to run their lives.

You can do the math on the local craigslist of any city or town out there comparing the cost of living with offered wages and see what is or is not sustainable. If you really want to see who is actually fucking it up even worse, look up the Chinese ghost cities on YouTube,