| This is probably a bit of an urban myth. I mean a similar meme exists too with Vancouver being assumed to be a "dumping ground" for Canada's homeless too, but when you look at the data that the homeless count polling accumulates, where they ask the homeless all sorts of questions, the trends aren't really apparent. I presume the same for California. It's less that homeless people are moving to places, and more that people are constantly moving to places, and then becoming homeless. California is one of the economic drivers of the United States. People are moving there all the time. Of course we'd expect economically marginal people to try to move to improve their situation, just as we'd expect a young tech worker to move to California for the same. Thinking about it the other way, if someone was poor with zero opportunities in some rural town with no jobs would it make any sense to stay there instead of moving to a larger city with more job potential? Of course not. On occasion you hear some story about some small town mayor busing some homeless person out of their town to the big city, but on closer inspection seems often the case that there's a fair circumstance here of helping someone that can't afford travel get in contact with a relative. |