So are you suggesting we base our understanding of this problem on anecdotes?
The problem I have with that is that the anecdotes that you present are constructed to support the idea that there is nothing to be done, that we must simply accept that homelessness is too big a problem to be solved or even quantified. I refuse to accept that conclusion, and support efforts to understand the problem rationally.
http://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/San-Francisc...
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/king-coun...
> The records show that more than 8,000 clients listed their last ZIP code as 98104, which covers Pioneer Square and downtown. That’s about 25 percent of all clients who gave King County ZIP codes. Putnam says clients sometimes list ZIP codes for the shelters where they last stayed or the neighborhood where they’d been seeking services.
Ya, the data is really noisy.
And do you really think the big cities can solve this problem on their own without regional support? Its like saying they can solve healthcare on their own, or any other country-wide problem.
Absolutely agree with you here. I think regional, even national initiatives are the real way to tackle this. Cities, as you correctly point out, bear the brunt of homelessness' impact. I don't think they can solve this alone.
There is hope that states can act. California just passed a $4 billion bond for housing veterans[1]. I hope the political will can be carried nationally, but have little faith in the current administration. They've already acted negligently, putting people using the GI housing benefit at risk[2]. I hope they face real blowback from this, but it's only one in a litany of scandals and failures at that level.
1. https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_1,_Housing_Pr...
2. https://www.npr.org/2018/11/17/668953517/computer-glitch-lea...
Cities act as a catchment for the rural areas around them: you can't really be homeless in Ellensburg or Aberdeen or Walla Walla (with no social services), but you can be homeless in Seattle or Spokane. A lot of kids on the street near UW in Seattle (aka ave rats) hail as far away as Montana. When I was working in downtown Seattle, many of the homeless that came around were Native Americans from various regions in the PNW.
And ya, people do wind up homeless after they move to the big city, but often for reasons back home (they lost their support network and couldn't stay solvent). Anyways, you can't fix the homeless problem in individual cities without also fixing it in the surrounding regions, or even the nation. People are mobile, they will be attracted to the best deal.