[hazzen]

I lived near there - at Clayton and Ashbury - for a year. Not once did I see any homeless people. There is no way of getting up to that location without hitting at least a block of 15% grade. But the hill did not demarcate the homeless population - it appeared to be Frederick, which is a block further south than Beulah away from Haight.

I had two theories: leaving Golden Gate Park, you end up on Frederick street; going north gets you to Haight St which is a wonderful place to panhandle, going south gets you nowhere. The other theory is that it would have gone further south (maybe a few more blocks to Parnassus), but the Cole/Carl intersection was nice enough, and full of enough families, to push people south the second they get off of the N-Judah.