When I lived in Columbus, Ohio, I too had my car broken into multiple times, saw shitting in the street, passed out drunks on the bus, screaming in the grocery store, the works. Of course, none of this happened in the WASPy burbs.

The insane is in every city in the U.S., whether or not you find it during your daily life is another thing. It depends on whether you live in the rich city or the parallel working class city, and whether those two cities interface.

In cities where the rich are well separated from the working class (most of the east where the rich live in suburbs separated by distances only traversable by private car due to chronically poor transit), homeless is ignored because it's never seen way out in the suburbs.

In cities like the west cost and the few growing cities in the east, where rich people are moving into formerly working class inner city neighborhoods, of course there is now friction. The rich and working class cities are suddenly face each other directly and constantly, and the end result is the working class is pushed out as housing prices increase, or the rich leave again and it all collapses again.

Take LA. Way more homeless. Yet you get neighborhoods like hancock park, smack dab in the middle of the city, where you will just not see any homeless people, because there is no reason for anyone working class to set foot in that neighborhood. You are priced out of housing and priced out of even lattes. It's a rich suburb full of mansions, you aren't gonna get much panhandling done and will stand out like a sore thumb to police and private security who love doing favors to nagging rich white women without jobs.

But there are parts like downtown la, that used to have flophouses where drunks and addicts could actually rent housing. Or echo park that was a gangland in the 90s or a thriving working class latino community depending on whose reality you consult. Now 1brs cost 2k, the flophouses are bulldozed or renovated (or just get a new coat of paint), people commanding high salaries now interface with homeless and working class people and compete for the same apartments; the two cities merge in DTLA and echo park, as well as other neighborhoods in LA with increasing gentrification.

NYC has the most homeless of anywhere, 90k, and nearly half a million more living in public housing below market rents, but you don't see homeless encampments because NYC builds shelters and housing without NIMBY fuss; something like 95% of homeless are housed in NYC.

In any city you see these problems, and in cities with any semblance of demand that refuse to build supply to match, resulting in unaffordable housing for everyone not pulling >60k a year, you can see how this problem can grow exponentially larger. Never forget that the problem is present in every city, be it Columbus, NYC, LA, or Tulsa. The solutions are there and accepted in academic circles, but whether or not you see these solutions and their effect is directly reflective on the local political climate.