It's really disheartening to see the plight of people who could have been helped. Especially, given that we (US) spend more per capita on healthcare...
Another interesting observation is the difference between LA and SF. In LA (beach areas and west LA/Westwood) a side from minor inconvenience of a line outside public beach restrooms/showers and some encampments, there really isn't a disruption. In SF, people walk in yelling into stores, act out aggressively in broad daylight and generally don't seem to feel any restraint. I never felt particularly unsafe in LA, but definitely had to watch my surroundings last weekend in SF, much more than ever before in the last decade.
I looked up "Homelessness in the UK" on Wikpedia and the first line is:
> Homelessness in the United Kingdom is kept somewhat at bay
> by a reasonable volume of housing, statutory rights, and
> various government initiatives.
I don't know what figures you are looking at, but one caveat that occurs to me is that the UK's main homelessness charity, Shelter, has a fairly broad definition of homelessness. You don't have to be sleeping in the street for them to consider you "homeless". Which is good, because relying on your friends' sofas for housing is indeed a very crappy situation which government policy should seek to minimize, but bad, because that's not what other people consider homelessness to be.
Worse is the homeless situation in third world countries where even less services are available. Being homeless in a Western nation is far different than anywhere else. It may be exaggerated in SF and LA simply because of two reasons, climate and more support for those in need. So the city may actually being doing a good job but is simply attracting more people because they are
tl;dr do not for a moment think that homelessness isn't as bad issue elsewhere, let alone countries where the US is equal to economically.