[rsync]

"Is there seriously any question why the rate is higher here? The homeless are treated pretty decently. SF has more homeless because it generally treats them better than the rest of the US, not worse."

No, there is not a seriously any question.

It's (relatively) warm in San Francisco, year round, and social mores are (relatively) welcoming to aberrant behavior. These people exist and they're not going to disappear, therefore they have to go somewhere.

There is actually a quite nice A/B test already in place in the United States. Minneapolis/St. Paul is culturally almost as liberal and progressive as northern california and have an extensive social services and support network for all manner of social circumstances. Also it's literally deadly to be homeless for 2-4 months of the year. In all of my years living in downtown Minneapolis (and other years living in suburban twin cities) I witnessed a very, very low level of homelessness.

[jdietrich]

It's worth noting that homelessness =/= rough sleeping. For every person you see sleeping on the streets, there are several who are squatting, living in vans, crashing on couches etc. Hidden homelessness is much more difficult to identify, so the headline statistics on homelessness rates can be misleading.