During college in Utah I was sad each winter to regularly read stories in the newspaper about homeless people found frozen to death in parks.
After President Jimmy Carter closed the mental institutions in the 70s, the mentally ill people were just let out of the asylums without any plan or further support from the state.
Since then, homelessness has grown into a ubiquitous and rampant problem throughout the United States.
Especially true in sunny California, and doubly so in San Francisco. SF seems to have become the Homeless Capital of the world. A sad and embarrassing state of affairs for a "leading" first world country.
To be clear, the amount homelessness in California is not due to lack of improvement efforts. The City of San Francisco alone pours a quarter of a billion dollars annually into services for the homeless. Despite such efforts, more than half of the homeless in the city remain unsheltered.
"1980 President Jimmy Carter signs the Mental Health Systems Act to improve on Kennedy’s dream [JFK wanted to create a network of community mental health centers where mentally ill people could live in the community while receiving care.].
1981 President Reagan repeals Carter’s legislation with the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. This pushes the responsibility of mentally ill patients back to the states. The legislation creates block grants for the states, but federal spending on mental illness declines."
https://www.kqed.org/news/11209729/did-the-emptying-of-menta...
As far as California, specifically the bay area: it's a hell of a mess. Beyond people living on the streets, there is a growing group of people living in RVs. I took these pics near my office in Palo Alto a couple of weeks ago:
Illegally parked, but not homeless
Also: at least in Mountain View and Palo Alto, these are not all necessarily illegally parked. They need to be moved every couple of days, but at the moment, the cities aren't pressing the issue.