Nope, this is as it should be. Being good guy have its price. You want your hands clean? You're going to be poor. Every good RPG is about choices. You can live with knowledge that some family will die from hunger, because you've robbed them, or you can decide to not steal from them, but instead suffer hunger yourself. I hate games when rewards for being good and bad are always the same. Virtue is its own reward.
I'm not voting one way or the other, but there is a fine line here between opting to be poor and dealing with something that is poorly designed.
Remove all items that can be "stolen" from the maps and let everyone rely on the current random loot system for whatever remains. Are you satisfied with the level of character progression that is possible at that point? If not, you have a problem that needs fixing.
Unless this game is seeking to be a poverty simulator, you don't design theft to be a necessity. You design it to be a perk. A means to make money beyond the norm - but the norm itself needs to be adequate to play the game with.
