For at least a decade in the 2010s before covid. Fall asleep, headphones in. Any train, anywhere, any time of day. I used to work nights in the village and would doze off at midnight on empty trains going to Brooklyn. With a designer purse full of cash, no less. Used to go home after raves at 4am wearing fishnet bodysuits and booty shorts. Rode trains during rush hour all of high school and college. No issues. Crime and theft definitely happened, but you could generally expect to ride the train in peace without having to worry about falling asleep, having visible electronics or decent clothes.

I feel like "failure" implies that it's not their explicit intention to make thousands, even millions of dollars go mysteriously missing

Manhattan is an island.

Seattle and Portland (and now Vancouver) have been trying to do "housing first" for some time and it's been failing miraculously.....like really, absolutely, terribly failing and more people are dying on the streets than ever before despite there being millions and millions of dollars flung at this effort. Unfortunately, people that are committed to killing themselves and everyone around them cannot be bribed into normalcy.

"Safe housing" is a meaningless phrase because the only thing that makes any housing safe or unsafe is who's in and around the housing. If you fill up a "safe housing" apartment block with people that are mentally unstable, on seriously neurotoxic drugs, that have a history of violence and theft, and that have no desire or intention to reintegrate into society, with zero supervision or expectation for the people to utilize rehab services, well....that "safe housing" is gonna turn into a meth lab waiting to explode very quickly. If not that, then the building gets absolutely wrecked with fentanyl contamination, mold, piss, fecal matter, fires being started indoors, people setting each other's stuff on fire, and the structure literally being taken apart and harvested for sellable resources like copper. Nothing to say for the theft, looting, violence, and terror inflicted on the surrounding neighborhood where these housing "solutions" get thrown up. Entire swaths of the region have turned into ghost towns that turn into skid rows, and the cycle of enablement continues. Which is exactly what's happening all over the PNW.

Source: lived for 24 years in NYC and now live in PNW

Jermaine is a wild card.....would not advise going to him for emotional support.