Homeless flock to SF because it's very tolerant of them relative to many other cities (some of which actually bus their mentally ill to SF), and the conditions are moderate enough that they aren't fighting off hypothermia. It has nothing to do with their desire to live on the curb in front of expensive real estate.

I don't know that you understand the problem at all if you refer to it as a choice. Particularly if you think the alternative choice is home ownership in abandoned areas of the country's most troubled city. Owning some empty, stripped-apart house in Detroit doesn't solve anybody's problems and certainly doesn't eliminate the cost of supporting the downtrodden. Many people in Detroit who have skills aren't finding employment and are barely surviving. A property title doesn't fill your stomach day after day. And the 4-figure houses you refer to are that way because they represent more liability than asset. They need massive investment to make them liveable.

Your comment is frankly ignorant.

I get your point, but Detroit is a really bad example. Who would want to live with undrinkable water and the highest murder rate in the country, with essentially no municipal services, in a house so run down that it'd be condemned in any other city?

You must be thinking of St. Louis and Flint, MI…

That, plus I hear Detroit is bouncing back a bit. The homeless would probably become jobless, there. A slight improvement, I guess.

Oops, yeah the contaminated water thing is in Flint. But Detroit does have high crime, even if the exact rankings vary slightly from year to year.

Are you suggesting bussing all of the homeless to Detroit?