While feuding with strangers on Facebook, I remembered I sat on the student housing committee as Treasurer of the Tasmanian University Union.
The committee worked very well because when students were defaulting on their rent or otherwise would be difficult, it was common for a member of the committee should know them. They could comment on whether the student was short of money or spending their money on alcohol or drugs often with them at the pub on Friday night. Several of us lived at university colleges so we knew lots of people. I told the committee to come down hard on one defaulting tenant because I knew he was wealthy and he just did not want to pay. He was just trying to on because he did not like to pay bills. We had the same problem with him paying the student club fees at my college.
I had a rather sleepless weekend because on Monday morning it was going to be the job of the committee to go around together and evict a student who refuse to pay his rent and refused to communicate with the housing officer, who was a professional housing officer. On Monday morning, I was greatly relieved to hear that he got in contact so he was not going to be evicted. I was one of several who knew of his drug habit.
My brother-in-law was a youth housing officer at the office of emergency housing in an Australian state. To do his job properly he had to face the world as it is.
He said that the clients he dealt with, the teenagers and so forth, would never be taken in by a private landlord because they do not pay their rent, damage the place and invite all their mates over for parties. He believed everyone should have a house, but he did not pretend they are all model tenants.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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