All the things you described (besides crack and meth) are a good start. We're missing key pieces, but your apparent solution (make their lives harder until they are driven to a slightly less bad place) is just pushing the problem onto someone else.

That's fine if you only care about your neighborhood, but it's obviously not a solution if your goal is to stabilize society.

What's the long term plan for people in that situation?

If society weren't so hostile to some people, maybe they wouldn't shut off to participating in it. And even for those that don't - it makes financial sense to macroeconomically attempt to minimize the frequency of economic drop-outs but microeconomically it is much better to not just ignore the ones you have and force them on the street, because they cause a lot of property damage, which lands them in jail, where they got over a hundred thousand a year to keep imprisoned.

So economically, there has to be a recognition that some people are going to give up on the system and decide to stop trying to please a brutal economic machine, and that some of them may even become bad actors, in order to develop a realistic plan.

Compassion isn't hilariously wrong

I'll post my source (a SF gov census) later today, when I'm not on my phone.

It's more than 1 in 5, in fact it's almost 1/3rd of the homeless that have 'moved' to SF.

1 in 5 is the number of homeless (from the same survey) whose first place of residence in San Francisco was a homeless shelter. It's buried under figure 16 in this survey:

http://sfgov.org/lhcb/sites/default/files/2015%20San%20Franc...

So 1 in 4 ( or 1 in 3) people are coming here directly to use the services. The 1 in 5 figure is significant because it strongly suggests that homeless nonprofits are actively seeking referrals from other parts of the state and country. We know that in some cases people are literally being sent here:

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2015/10/nevada-settles-busin...

Yes, that was found to be illegal and some wrists were slapped. I find it hard to conceive that this is the only homeless bussing program - there's no other conceivable way that so many of them are arriving, and immediately finding places in homeless shelters that typically have waiting lists, and definitely have plenty of underserved former tenants.

Ultimately, the organizations involved have no incentive to stop referrals from other parts of the country. The more people they serve, the more money they can ask for from the city, and the more 'successful' they are as a non-profit business.

And just as serving more people is in their interests, so is dumping the most troubled, and consequently, most costly onto the streets in order to serving another round of newcomers. Once they've outstayed their welcome, or become too costly, they are shunted onto the streets. And the worse the crisis gets, the more money they can ask for from the city.

I'm not suggesting that this is some kind of intentional human trafficking. I am sure that (almost) everyone involved is doing so because, in a small minded way, they think that they are improving the world. However, the end result is a travesty.

My thesis is that our current environment is is the result non-profits being run in a capitalist business environment, with a capitalist, MBA-style mindset. Eventually, the business model achieves stasis with it's environment, which, in this case, involves letting the city be a dumping ground for human tragedy, and letting the city's tax payers pay $250 million dollars a year for the privilege. The crisis is the side effect of this expanding bureaucracy achieving homeostasis and justifying its existence.

Getting only down to 50F max and having a 60F avg temp is easily solved by a sweater. 80F+ is solved by an AC, which is a lot more work.

Please don't post trollishly about divisive topics. That produces flamewars, which destroy the site.

But wait, since being homeless is one the worst experiences a human being can have this can only be the flippant perspective of someone who has no clue about homelessness and no interest to learn.

Please be civil. We are not here to attack others. We are here to discuss the topic.

I agree. IMO, we should have doubled down on the war on drugs approach. The free access to drugs and lax enforcement is the undeniable sole reason for SF's homelessness problem. I don't why SF has taken an opposite approach, as the war on drugs has been an unquestionable thriving success in the rest of the country.