The major cities of the Pacific Northwest actually have at least one serious problem that stems from making the homeless lifestyle too easy: too many runaway teens. One of my sisters lives in Portland, and for several years she worked as a social worker for teenage girls. The network of shelters, kitchens, and other services for the homeless is so extensive there that a lot of teens choose to leave home and just live on the streets. It is (or was, at least) so pervasive that there was actually some name for the phenomenon (can't remember what it was, off the top of my head), and it was a major concern to the organizations my sister worked with. Part of the problem is that there are policies in place that made it extremely difficult for parents to find their kids and bring them home. These policies exist for good reasons (e.g. abused children who shouldn't be found and brought home), but they are so one-sided that kids can just choose to run away because they feel like it, and their parents have no recourse if the kids are in the city's shelter system.