First, except in the case of rural farm families and the earlier case of a much smaller population, where many people had houses, many wives also had to work because the husband didn't make enough money for the family to survive.
Second, almost no one gets their rent completely paid by the government. Section 8 says you pay one-third of your income and the government covers the rest. If you get any income, even from child support and a really part-time job, you pay at least the one-third.
Third, you can't tell whether a person is disabled merely by looking at him or her. In 2000, the NY Times did a study to find out why so many people in the welfare to work program were recidivists. One thing stood out to me: fully one-fifth of the women who were recidivists had been sexually abused as kids or raped as adults. I have news for you - that is because their experience had disabled them. Again, there are people who have cancer or heart disease. You don't know how sick they are.
I have a friend who, admittedly, now uses a walker, but you'd never suspect her original disability. She has over 35 scars on her brain because of the damage her physically abusive mother did to her when she was a small child, and the problem is that she can have brain seizures because of it. That's why she was let go as a nurse's aide, a food service worker, and other employment. She loved working, but employers wouldn't keep her because of the seizures. For a while, she worked by doing hand knit sweaters and scarves, but it was a self-employed thing, and not everyone is good at self-employment.
If you want to spend less on the safety net, make lower rents. Make rooming houses, so people who can't afford apartments can get something smaller. And please don't ignore the fact that baby boomers are in retirement and live on fixed incomes as elderly renters. There are dozens of reasons our economy has not adapted to the needs, but greed for profit is a big one.
