[pknomad]

yep.

I moved to the SF Bay area from NYC 4 years ago and I routinely tell my friends that you need to watch out for human, not animal, feces on the street.

It's really sad to see people who are employed that are still homeless and have to deal with mental issues :(

[yodsanklai]

Reading from HN, half of Americans are either in jail or homeless dealing with mental issues. Are there proper statistics to get a better assessment of the situation?

[rufus_foreman]

"If all prisoners are counted (including those juvenile, territorial, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) (immigration detention), Indian country, and military), then in 2008 the United States had around 24.7% of the world's 9.8 million prisoners."

--https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_ra...

The list of countries by incarceration rate is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera....

About 5% of people in the US go to prison at some point, 9% for males, 16% for Hispanic males, and 29% for black males. https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/Llgsfp.pdf

"About one-quarter of U.S. adults report having a mental health diagnosis such as anxiety or depression or experiencing emotional distress. This is one of the highest rates among 11 high-income countries. ... The United States has some of the worst mental health–related outcomes, including the highest suicide rate and second-highest drug-related death rate."

--https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2...

And of course, "Approximately 80 percent of the global opioid supply is consumed in the United States".

-- https://www.cnbc.com/2016/04/27/americans-consume-almost-all...

[nradov]

https://www.usich.gov/homelessness-statistics/ca/

The Federal Government estimates that about 0.4% of Californians were homeless in 2020. From what I've seen on the streets the numbers are probably a little worse now.

[yodsanklai]

By comparison, France has 300 000 homeless persons [1], which is about 0.44%. It doesn't seem to be as big an issue here compared to California. Maybe homeless people are more concentrated in SF which makes the problem appear worse than in other countries?

[1] https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2020/11/15/la-fondati...

[asdff]

LA county alone has like 100 thousand homeless people. That's the population of Burbank California.