A few reasons. The first is that cities and most people aren’t keen on encouraging the homeless to occupy public spaces like parks. Active measures in most places try to discourage it in fact. The second is that while it may seem like a good idea- fruit is not only lacking in certain nutrition while high in sugars compared to other vegetables, but edible fruits encourage wild animals and insects as well, two more things most cities aren’t keen on having about. Lastly- most “urban trees” average a service life and care which would make the costs of ensuring mature fruit bearing trees was such that even if it was in the budget, that money could be better used on other programs to help those in need. That’s not to mention the climates of many places limiting the fruits that could be grown, or potential environmental impact.
In addition to the points of the other guest, active fruiting trees are messy. The fruits that aren't easily reachable or the ones that fall and rot, or the ones that wildlife decides to take a few bites of so they rot on the tree before falling to the ground make a mess under and around the tree. If it's one or two trees, most are not self pollinating, so you'd have a very limited number of fruits available during a very specific time of year, if it's multiple types, it would still be staggered availability, messy, and even if intended for the homeless there would be the people saying "this is my tax money" and gleaning the fruits, additionally kids are assholes and would play around destroying the trees and chucking underripe fruit at each other for the hell of it, ruining the "harvestability".
Then bag 'em and sell 'em.
My mom had an orange tree in her front yard and these people would drive by at the crack of dawn, pick every f*ing orange, then sell them a few streets down
Same. My Aunt had three grapefruit trees in a suburb of Orlando. People would do a drive by and steal the fruit. Which is insane. Grapefruits are cheap at the market.
Set up cameras, get their tag number, jail them for 10 counts of theft or in some states grand theft.
Edit: also catch them selling it on camera and get them on selling stolen property (can't remember the actually charge name)
This is a pleasant idea but unfortunately people are not pleasant. They will steal all the fruit, resell them, and destroy the tree in the process. We had something similar done in our neighborhood it was nice at first but then people became greedy and stole them and some punk kids broke the branches of the tree.
My mom had an orange tree in her front yard and these people would drive by at the crack of dawn, pick every f*ing orange, then sell them a few streets down
Edit: also catch them selling it on camera and get them on selling stolen property (can't remember the actually charge name)