Homeless are the most visible, but perhaps not the biggest issue. See, e.g., the problem with public toilets: https://www.npr.org/2025/05/02/1248664709/-public-good-why-i...

> JOHN COCHRANE: I think the activists who wanted toilet equity did not imagine the solution would be no toilet or a fight with businesses over who's going to be able to use the toilet.

> [...]

> BERAS: Without that incentive, Nik-O-Lok was right. The free public toilets were overrun with people who had to go or people abusing drugs or having sex. Cities were changing. In lots of places, they struggled to fund and maintain public places. With no income from the toilets, taking care of them was harder than ever. Cities couldn't deal. Eventually, they closed them or let them fall into disrepair. The pay toilets may have been flawed, but they served a purpose that no public or private entity has been able to effectively fill since. John says this is a classic tale of a price control, when the government imposes a price.

I think the case for at least allowing nominal payments for toilets is pretty strong. Anything that is free either requires significant and expensive oversight to mitigate anti-social behaviors, or a society that has equivalent anti-social checks baked into the culture (which the U.S. definitely does not have). We should aspire to ubiqitous free toilets, free transit, etc, but there's an infinite number of things people want to be free, or at least subsidized. The public has to pick & choose and allocate its resources wisely.

Note that almost everywhere in the U.S., transit is strongly subsidized and often effectively free for the most in need, but it might require some legwork. In SF where it's quite trivial to get this subsidy (https://treasurer.sf.gov/economicjustice/sfmta-transit-disco...) people still balk at the requirement, though I think the people who complain the most are the ones far too wealthy to have to worry about these things. Some government programs, especially Federal programs, have onerous application and reporting requirements specifically designed to dissuade use, but individual transit subsidies aren't generally structured this way. In SF and to a lesser degree California, there are armies of people paid to hold people's hand through these processes (mostly for Federal and Federally subsidized programs, as many state and especially local programs tend to be very low friction).