This might ignite a fight in the comments, but it’s a genuine question.
(As an American) when I think of places that fight crime primarily with welfare (aka the idea better policing doesn’t work, equality will fix it), I think of San Francisco and Seattle which have crazy homeless and crime problems.
However, it seems to me like in Europe, plenty of places seem to do this and see positive results.
What’s the difference? Why is the welfare city of San Francisco terrible but the welfare city of Amsterdam/Stockholm/etc seem to be fine?
My guess is it comes from drug related policies, education, culture and enforcement. The USA is the developed country with the highest per-capita rates of alcohol & drug use disorders and drug related deaths. I believe this is due to the geography and high purchasing power of americans, not due to any flaws in character. You're in a place it's easy to get drugs into, and people earn enough to buy them. This then creates a mental health and drug epidemic which are the true cause of most homelessness in the cities you reference, as opposed to purely being lack of money, job or housing, though these problems are obviously not mutually exclusive.
The problem for san Francisco is that they just attract more homeless whenever they try to help them. You can not solve poverty in a single city with open borders, you need to solve it for the whole state/country. Especially if the city has a temperate climate that attracts homeless anyway.
As an aside: The big cities in the Netherlands also have some of the poorest neighborhoods in the country. If you pick a random smaller town/city it is likely to have less poverty than Amsterdam, (but also less wealthy residents).
Is the goal of policy profit, or to fix a problem?
I am in Canada, so we have a blend of American, and European society, and it seems that when people want to extract money from the community, the problem isn't resolved. I see this in the homeless/drug space from activist organizations who are extracting lots of money from government, but are not doing a good job of solving problems, as that would end the flood of money.
(As an American) when I think of places that fight crime primarily with welfare (aka the idea better policing doesn’t work, equality will fix it), I think of San Francisco and Seattle which have crazy homeless and crime problems.
However, it seems to me like in Europe, plenty of places seem to do this and see positive results.
What’s the difference? Why is the welfare city of San Francisco terrible but the welfare city of Amsterdam/Stockholm/etc seem to be fine?