Fifteen years ago I made a documentary about homelessness (https://graceofgodmovie.com/) and one of the things that many of my subjects talked about was the "homeless industrial complex". These were organizations who ostensibly helped homeless people, while also advocating for policies that created more homelessness and more problems for homeless people, like restrictive zoning to prevent development, and laws against sleeping in public places. I never dug into the extent to which this was true, but it certainly seems plausible. The cost of actually fixing the problem would be putting yourself and everyone in your organization out of work.
It could be simple dissonance with their beliefs as city residents (NIMBY, keep cities clean etc.). Same way a priest can be against abortion and divorce while daily helping victims of abuse and runaway kids.