[phaser]

Unhoused people do exist, and they vote for you so it's in there. Also shelters with real costs based on good data. Modeling slums is actually quite hard. There were unhoused camping sites in the early access version but I was unhappy with how it turned out and retired the feature back to the drawing board.

I want it to come back because it's in the spirit of the game not to hide the "ugly" aspects of city life.

There is gentrification in the way that landlords discriminate low income renters and NIMBYs have political power over you (in the form of the 'disagreement aura')

There's no rules against building single family homes in a city center, but the effect is what you would expect: non optimal tax revenue as you could zone it for something that's worth a lot more.

[skew-aberration]

Does the AI have a say in what type of residential buildings are built, or is it all up to the player? If the AI is choosing, then there should be some way to naturally incentivize the landlords to build apartment towers where there is a higher demand, and cheaper housing in the suburbs where workers can't afford to pay higher rents.

Congrats on the game and I hope you're keeping some design notes as the balancing act between realism and gameplay will surely make for an interesting story.