Never forget: the system is working as intended. Unfortunately. Costs are high, because an incredibly small, undemocratic Elite keeps them high.
I live in Austria and Vienna, the capital, has about 80,000 empty apartments. That's 4 times more than needed to house EVERY SINGLE HOMELESS PERSON IN AUSTRIA.
As long as we keep allowing individuals to become infinitely rich (and thus powerful) nothing will change. We need to tax the shit out of them and socialize and democratize big businesses.