[jeffbee]

Wrong on all points. The places with the most addicts (W. Virginia) have the least homelessness (W. Virginia again). There really isn't any more too it than supply and demand. The only reasons that is seems like all homeless are addicts are 1) only a small fraction of homeless are obviously homeless, and 2) addicts are less able to cope with high housing costs. But that's a marginal effect; plenty of drug abuse happens within the community of housed people.

[shuckles]

> The only reasons that is seems like all homeless are addicts are...

The Point in Time count data indicate the vast majority of homeless people have issues with drug abuse. A substantial majority of those also have dual diagnoses.

Maybe you are trying to argue that drug abuse is not sufficient, or something, but you have not brought that nuance. The OP is more correct than you: drug abuse has a large role to play in the street homelessness of San Francisco.

(An alternative view: if rents were the primary causal factor, then why is the problem substantially worse than a decade ago when San Francisco rents peaked? Why did the problem get so much worse during COVID when nonpayment evictions were held for many years and low income renters got billions in cash transfers, increasing their aggregate income while rents dropped?)

[DoreenMichele]

Maybe you are trying to argue that drug abuse is not sufficient, or something, but you have not brought that nuance.

Millionaire rock stars go in and out of rehab repeatedly and don't end up homeless. There is no direct cause-and-effect relationship between drug abuse and homelessness. We only make that connection after the fact. I know of zero credible sources predicting homelessness based on "He's an addict! So it's inevitable!"

There are lots of problems with the stats we keep on homeless people and such people are by their very nature tough to track. There are political agendas driving how the questions get asked and the data gets framed, all of which contradicts my firsthand experience with homelessness and what I have heard for years from actual homeless people.

In a nutshell:

California has about 12 percent of the US population, 25 percent of the US homeless population and more than 50 percent of the nation's unsheltered homeless. I do not find it credible to claim these people are all "locals" and I firmly believe California is the dumping ground for the nation's homeless problem.

[brynb]

grapevine knowledge, but i have been told (and credibly, i think, given how adaptive humans are, and how they adapt for very specific parameters while devaluing others) that many homeless will go to great lengths to seek out new locales that seem willing to help sustain their needs without requiring wholesale change of their lifestyles. some people do indeed prefer it (or at least fear the alternative, i.e. “proper” integration into society and all that comes with that), as much as some people on this website cannot fathom that

[throwaway2037]

I've seen you post here many times on this topic. I always enjoy your posts and learn something new. Thank you to share.

Your last "nutshell" paragraph: I have read similar from other sources. Deeper question: Why? My thoughts: The weather in California makes it possible to be homeless, full time (12 months a year), without shelter -- not great, but not death by freezing. What do you think? I wonder if Hawai'i and Florida also have very high proportion of homeless people for similar reasons.

[DoreenMichele]

Weather is absolutely a factor. It's temperate and dry in some parts of California, making it much easier to just camp in a tent than places with freezing temperatures, lots of rain and snow.

[smugma]

Is this because of our high cost of housing, increased social support infrastructure for the homeless, or the temperate climate?

Yes.

[01100011]

A lot of folks in Appalachia seem to live in conditions tantamount to a tent encampment. They're more spread out and not in the way of urbanites so we don't talk about it much.

[EasyMark]

It also helps the cost of living is 1/4 what it is in a place like SF

[zeroCalories]

it's really hard to afford a sf apartment AND a crippling drug addiction, for several reasond

[chrischen]

I’m not sure if getting rid of the addiction would automatically make SF houses affordable. Certainly doesn’t help. But it’s also not SF’s job to house the entire nation’s homeless population.

[waveBidder]

it seems like it is if they're former SF residents priced out of their homes.

[seanmcdirmid]

Homeless services can’t discriminate based on previous residency, they aren’t even allowed to ask. HUD has some residency requirements, but they are only loosely enforced. A lifelong resident of SF are often competing for the same resources with ex-cons who just got off the bus after being released from prison in Texas given only an open bus ticket.

That being said, a resident of SF has many more other ways of avoiding the streets (and still be considered unhoused) vs that ex-con, so the numbers are going to be lopsided if we are just counting the visible homeless problem.

[fragmede]

That's weird. I learned just last week that Palo Alto requires proof that you ever lived in Palo Alto with a piece of mail before they'll let you into their shelter. Also their shelter has bunk cots. not bunk beds, bunk cots, so the bottom person is inches away from the top person.

[seanmcdirmid]

According to https://www.asaints.org/outreach/hotel-de-zink/, that is Palo Alto’s only homeless shelter and it doesn’t mention a residency requirement. It also doesn’t have the bunks you are referring to.

[shuckles]

It's very unlikely that former residents (in the sense of paying for housing for extended periods of time with their own wage income) comprise a significant portion of San Francisco's street homeless.

[doctorpangloss]

This is another one of your misconceptions.

> Nearly 8 out of every 10 unhoused people in Oakland were living in Alameda County when they lost their housing.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2021/homeless-project-o...

> Primary Cause of Homelessness (Top five responses, Fig. 19)

> Family or friends couldn't let me stay or argument with family/friend/roommate: 27%

> Eviction/Foreclosure/Rent increase: 25%

> Job loss: 22%

> Other money issues including medical bills, etc.: 13%

> Substance abuse: 13%

https://homelessness.acgov.org/homelessness-assets/docs/repo...

It's possible that many frequent flyers to emergency rooms have been dumped from other communities. But most homeless people are just that, people who have lost their homes in their community. And anyway, how could it really be any different?

> with their own wage income

Of course poverty is the number one reason they are becoming homeless. Why are you talking about wage income. They have too little income. Who the hell wants to live on the street!

[shuckles]

First of all, you cite data about Oakland when I was talking about San Francisco. The cities are different enough that it's worth noting. I will also state that I am well-informed about the matter and have few "misconceptions" in the obvious sense.

> Nearly 8 out of every 10 unhoused people in Oakland were living in Alameda County when they lost their housing.

That's not what the Point in Time count asks or tries to measure. The statistic reported is the location of last known shelter. So, as an example, someone who moves to San Leandro from Fresno to crash on a friend's couch for two weeks and then is asked to find a different place to stay would count as "living in Alameda County" for the purposes of the statistic. Another example: a longtime homeless person who has cycled in and out of shelters in the region for decades counts as "living in Alameda County" even if they first lost their home in Kern County or out of state.

> Primary Cause of Homelessness (Top five responses, Fig. 19)

This is silly data to cite. Drug use is correlated with money issues, interpersonal relationship problems, eviction, foreclosure, inability to keep a job, and more. Maybe if the survey had a multiple response design, the distribution would be relevant.

> And anyway, how could it really be any different?

I can think of dozens.

[seanmcdirmid]

Greyhound bus stations. If you’ve ever taken a bus across country before, they pick up a lot of people at prisons and they stay on until some west coast city (LA, SF, Portland, or Seattle). That accumulates, and once they stick around for at least a year, they are considered resident (for some definition of housing lost, that means even if they were housed in a hotel once, or couch surfed at the start). Surveys that rely on self reporting are incredibly inaccurate. One was done in Seattle, and found out that 80% of King county’s homeless population was previously housed in pioneer square, an absurdity that put the entire survey in doubt.

It really is in the self interest of homeless oriented agencies and NGOs to present the problem as local as possible. If it isn’t local, then giving out housing will only make the local problem worse (people will start arriving for their free housing from other areas of the country), you can judge your success by how much worse the problem gets, which isn’t popular with local voters.

Without good information, at any rate, it isn’t weird that we are seeing the problem get worse for every billion we throw at it. Eventually the popular cities will just give up trying very hard because they never had the power to fix it in the first place.

[imtringued]

Is this some kind of joke? Do you really think people who get evicted for not paying bills automatically get sent to a different city? How do you propose your magic mechanism to send people from SF away the moment they become homeless? Someone who ends up homeless is going to stay in a place that is familiar to them.

[shuckles]

> Do you really think people who get evicted for not paying bills automatically get sent to a different city?

When did I say that?

> How do you propose your magic mechanism to send people from SF away the moment they become homeless?

What does this have to do with anything? The vast majority of tenants evicted in San Francisco receive both legal representation and relocation fees starting at ~$7k per person and more if you claim disability, which most do.

There are ~80 nonpayment evictions in the city annually, and there were ~0 from 2020-2023.

> Someone who ends up homeless is going to stay in a place that is familiar to them.

Probably true of the average homeless person, but there are many more homeless people outside San Francisco than in it, so you only need to believe a small percentage of, say, California's homeless population ends up in the city for local homelessness to be dominated by folks who lost their last stable shelter outside the city.