> The city’s Department of Homeless Services pays many times the amount the rooms would usually rent for — spending over $3,000 a month for each threadbare room without a bathroom or kitchen — because of an acute shortage in shelters for homeless men and women. Indeed, the amount the city pays.. has encouraged Mr. Lapes to switch business models and become a major private operator of homeless shelters. He is by most measures the city’s largest and owns or leases about 20 of the 231 shelters citywide. Most of the other shelters and residences are run by the city or by nonprofit agencies, but his operation is profit-making, prompting criticism from advocates for the homeless and elected officials.

It sounds like the problem isn't Housing First, but a lack of resources for it.

For the record, a privatized shelter system isn't inherently a bad thing. Private shelters are an integral part of addressing homelessness in many cities.

The problem is that this particular program is an unbelievably inefficient route to that end result, and it also does so in a way that eats away at existing inventory for long-term tenants.

If that is indeed the case, I really can't blame them. Who would want a likely mentally unstable homeless person living on their property? I'm sure the expected property damage is substantially higher than from a standard tenant. Forcing landlords to take "vouchers" for high-risk tenants is essentially forcing much of the cost of homelessness away from the city and onto the landlords.