Have Any Spare Change?

In Doug McKelway's article titled,"GAO Report Highlights Wasteful Spending on Ending Homelesness," I gather that his intended audience are taxpayers. He provides information which supports the solution for the Governments wasteful spending, is to cut the programs and organizations that tackle homelessness. I get the feeling that he believes to help out with the nation's debt, we should just turn our backs and give up on helping the homeless. In the article is a statistic showing that the  GAO report founded in 2009, federal agencies spent about $2.9 billion dollars on more than 20 programs that targeted homelessness. The thing that bothered me was he followed that statistic with the statement," If that money were to be targeted toward the building of homes, at say, $200,000 per home, it could theoretically produce 145,000 houses."Really? Is $2.9 billion that much of a waste, not even considering that it is to help those in need, but yet the government can waste almost triple that amount on the war against drugs, which isn't improving. We can spend our tax money to convict and overfill our jails with petty marijuana charges, but we can't use it on those who actually benefit from it? Then to make the irrational idea of using that money to build more homes, when the nation is struggling to pay off the ones we already have. Yeah, that's a brilliant thought. Also, with the current unemployement rates, crappy economy, and all the layoffs affecting people everywhere, I have a feeling that all these programs that the government is "wasting" money on will come in handy soon.