First, housing in SF is insane. I have seen lots of articles about how bad it is and that $50k or even $100k is considered "low income" in these parts.
Second, the weather in the Bay Area is very homeless-friendly. If you need to sleep outside year-round, it is best to be someplace where you will neither die from the heat in summer nor from the freezing cold in winter.
Third, homelessness is on the rise nationwide. Homeless people can relocate relatively easily due to not having to give notice at their apartment and having lost most or all of their material possessions. So, the odds are good that some people are simply coming out here for the weather.
Fourth, big cities like SF tend to have more services for the homeless. There are meal kitchens and the like. If you are completely destitute, you go to where you can get free meals and other services. I know because that is exactly why I went to downtown San Diego for six months as a homeless person. I left and went elsewhere when I was no longer outright destitute and did not need access to things like soup kitchens to have any hope of surviving.
So, I think if you want to solve homelessness in SF, you need to work on homelessness across the nation.
That's incorrect according to "The 2016 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress" at https://www.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/2016-AHAR-P... . Page 8 has a graph of all homeless people, which has been on a downward trend from 2007 to 2016.
Thank you for the source. I will look at it some more when I have time. But on initial skim, it is a count for a single night in January from which they extrapolate for the whole year. Furthermore, it outright states that actual unsheltered people has risen by 2%. What has gone down is people in the shelter system.
I have been seeing a lot of articles about the rise in evictions, among other things, and I left downtown San Diego when I did in part because homeless services were suffering distress and were less and less useful to me because they were overwhelmed. But I will dig into this and see if I can come up with a more nuanced and accurate means to convey my point.
We have a very serious housing crisis on our hands. People who are homeless per se are merely the tip of the iceberg.
First, housing in SF is insane. I have seen lots of articles about how bad it is and that $50k or even $100k is considered "low income" in these parts.
Second, the weather in the Bay Area is very homeless-friendly. If you need to sleep outside year-round, it is best to be someplace where you will neither die from the heat in summer nor from the freezing cold in winter.
Third, homelessness is on the rise nationwide. Homeless people can relocate relatively easily due to not having to give notice at their apartment and having lost most or all of their material possessions. So, the odds are good that some people are simply coming out here for the weather.
Fourth, big cities like SF tend to have more services for the homeless. There are meal kitchens and the like. If you are completely destitute, you go to where you can get free meals and other services. I know because that is exactly why I went to downtown San Diego for six months as a homeless person. I left and went elsewhere when I was no longer outright destitute and did not need access to things like soup kitchens to have any hope of surviving.
So, I think if you want to solve homelessness in SF, you need to work on homelessness across the nation.