To be fair there's gotta be a more cost-effective place to house the unhoused than the Castro, West Village or Beverly Hills. I'm sure we can find cheaper stretches of land somewhere in the US.
If the average home in San Francisco sells for $1.2 million, and the average home in Willard, New Mexico sells for $120,000 is it really so dreadful to help ten times as many homeless people?
People with non-tech jobs already can't afford to live in SF. Unless you're expecting the formerly unhoused to suddenly become a Senior Machine Learning Engineer at FAANG, they aren't going to have a great time trying to make ends meet in SF.
It's not a city where you want to rediscover yourself in, unless you inherited property from a previous generation or you're one of the lucky few whose career is benefiting from the latest tech gold rush. You will not escape the homelessness cycle unless SF taxpayers guarantee you free housing until you get hired by Netflix.
I do entirely get this, but I also think it's a little disingenuous for some to act like their consideration is any more about what's best for that homeless population, versus what's best for those residents.
I didn't say it was without benefit, whatsoever. But it's not a net positive. Now you have a bunch of people who the local populace is going to be bitter at, because they get subsidized shelter. There's no jobs to be had, so you have people living there who are now going to be taking more from local social services (and they're not contributing particularly to local taxes). There's not much of anything to do there (and not in the whiny sense, there's near zero amenities, it's a town of 250 people). They're stuck there, because any notable services and infrastructure require a car (there's no public transit infrastructure).
In my mind? All you've done is create a powder keg.