California is the most populous state in the US. With 39.5 million people, it has quite a lead on the number two state of Texas at 28 million. [1]

Surveys typically suggest that only about 10 percent of the homeless in California come from elsewhere. This leaves 90 percent of them as Californians who had a home there at one time.

Thanks in part to the lovely weather, California has the most unsheltered homeless. IIRC, it also has the most chronic homeless.

I spent nearly six years homeless, most of it in California. I left the state to get back into housing someplace cheaper.

I strongly suspect that the insane California housing prices are a major factor here, much more so than mental health issues or addiction. For every 100 poor families on the West Coast, there are only 30 affordable homes. [2]

California has about 8.5% of the US population. There is something very wrong that it has 25% of the homeless population.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territori...

[2] https://www.geekwire.com/2018/every-100-families-living-pove...

> California has about 8.5% of the US population.

I think you misread the line for California in your footnoted reference #1, which shows it at 12.14%.

> I strongly suspect that the insane California housing prices are a major factor here

Only if California is reduced to the touristy hollywood-esque definition of LA + SF.

Inland there are tons of affordable towns and even dying towns. A while back there was even a town selling itself on eBay (and was unsuccessful at that).

"This leaves 90 percent of them as Californians who had a home there at one time."

Sounds made up. Source?

can you give me the source of the homelessness survey? I’ve never heard of it and it’s not mentioned in your links. also did they differentiate between non-chronic and chronic homeless people? If that’s true for all chronic homelsss people then it changes story. It’s possible that we just produce a lot of mentally ill people here since CA is one of the largest states.

Also referring to the geek wire article, low income doesn’t necessarily mean homeless, especially chronically homeless. CA just tends to help them move to low income housing in cheaper parts of the state

Cities across the country survey their homeless populations in January, at least every two years. You can usually Google "city homeless count/survey" to get the reports.

For example, San Francisco: http://hsh.sfgov.org/research-reports/san-francisco-homeless...

Los Angeles: https://www.lahsa.org/documents?id=2059-2018-greater-los-ang...

According to the 2017 SF survey, 10% of homeless were out of state when they most recently became homeless. According to the 2018 LA survey, 14% were out of state.

I am not sure if you should entirely trust these numbers, or if they are asking exactly the right question---everyone involved knows that there's a right answer and a wrong answer to the question---but it's the best we have.

If it's helpful 8.5% of all L.A county residents have lived in the county less than a year which you can contrast that to the 7% of homeless that have been here less than a year.

And according to a UCLA study, "65% of unsheltered homeless individuals have lived in the county for more than 20 years." That means 35% have been here less than 20 years.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ucla-anderson-forecast...

And how many of the homeless were born in the county? I suspect it's a very low considering so many residents in the county of L.A. aren't native born.

There's a funny advertisement for the Grinch movie here in L.A. which rings true. The line says, something like, "My favorite time of year is Christmas, when everyone goes back to where they came from."

I don't have a citation for a specific survey. It's a figure I recall seeing in various articles.

I think a much more likely explanation than "California just churns out crazy people at a phenomenal rate" is "There's probably a connection between the insane housing prices and the crazy high levels of homelessness there."