Weather. I used to be homeless in Toronto (at lived in the Don Valley forest for a time) and it's actually kinda fun - in the summer.

As soon as that first cold spike hits, you feel like death inside.

Can you help clarify why so many of these young homeless with dogs also prefer camo as their clothing color of choice?

Because BDUs/ACUs and similar are cheap, common enough at thrift stores and highly durable. I make almost 6 figures and I have BDUs I use when I'm doing manual labor.

It's outdoor gear. A lot of outdoor gear shops have surplus in their name, because there's a link between the outdoors, hunting/fishing, and the military. A lot of outdoors people don't like it and would rather wear patagonia vests (like VCs do), but camo gear certainly isn't an unusual choice for outdoors types. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surplus_store

Their tuxedos are at the dry cleaners.

Camo is fairly popular among young people, homeless or otherwise. I would venture to guess it’s cheap and requires less washing too.

Dirt is less visible on them?

This is a national problem (ie. anyone in the US can be homeless anywhere), and yet it's trying to be solved at a city level.

Logistically that is impossible and makes no sense.

As for why there are so many young people homeless in SF, it's probably because SF is one of the most willing cities trying to solve a national problem by itself. We also have great weather (not too hot in the summer, not too cold in the winter). And probably a lot of generous people walking the streets.

It's really horrible what our national government has allowed to happen in our country and it's impractical for our city to hold the burden to solve this nation's problems.

I do think mental health is a national problem, but if the homeless people are san franciscans, its definitely a city level issue.

Its not a poor city that needs national help: it spends 10 billion dollars a year for a shitty bus and a poop patrol.

only defense, interstate commerce, international relations, and the like are national problems.

the state is the canonical unit for a problem like homelessness, and each state is free to delegate to local jurisdictions or to coordinate with other states on solutions.

by the way, san francisco has about 8000 homeless folks, and LA has ~55,000 (~40% of the 130,000 homeless in the state). if we wanted to build new housing for all of these folks, we'd need about $50B (state budget is about $200B/year). LA, for instance, spent $0.6B on homelessness last year, or about 3% of what is needed just in LA.

we either continuously pay for homelessness indirectly (and ineffectively), through police, crime, social services, drugs, non-profits, governmental programs, emergency services, etc. or actually tackle the problem directly by raising and allocating that $50B.

(obviously talking about first-order effects here. this is not an in-depth policy paper.)

Given that the federal government weasels its way into things by claiming "interstate commerce" in questionable circumstances, or threatening withholding things like federal highway funds if states don't comply, your argument doesn't hold much water with me.

Hell, the REAL ID act is technically illegal, but the feds can use the "we won't let you board a flight without one" stick to force compliance.

The federal government gets its paws into whatever it wants to. It simply doesn't care about homeless issues.

I do agree that, on its face, homelessness seems like a textbook local/state problem. However, any city/state that tries to solve the problem with money and services will be a magnet for homeless people from outside the area, which can easily overwhelm the services provided. How do you fix that?

States and cities can build a wall and introduce a visa system? I don't understand how any problem that would require effective border control to solve at a local level (because otherwise it turns into a global problem) can be considered a textbook state problem?

I'd say this is a textbook border-controlling-entity-level problem...

Not workable; freedom of movement among the states has been recognized as a constitutional right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement_under_Unit...

Yeah, you know, Brexit is going really great for Britain: we should definitely try dissolving the union and see if that helps.

My preference (and argument) falls closer to global planetary government than to village-state actually...

> "Given that the federal government weasels its way into things [anyway]... your argument doesn't hold much water with me."

that's such a non-sequitur. so is the gist that we just accept the federal government overstepping its bounds? that's sounds so defeatist. instead, let's put even more pressure on (all of) our representatives to contain the overstepping.

> "...magnet for homeless people from outside the area, which can easily overwhelm the services provided. How do you fix that?"

that's worth keeping in mind, but there's no compelling evidence that that's going to be a problem. an optimist might posit that it's just as likely that micro-economies develop that allow the former homeless to lift others out of homelessness without further intervention. it depends on how things are implemented of course. let's take a step forward and (continually) assess.

Would it really cost about 400 thousand dollars per homeless person? That's what 50 bil / 130,000 gets you.

yes, from what i've read, it costs roughly $400K per unit ($440K is actually the number thrown about) in the metro areas of california (whether it's affordable housing or not). that apparently includes the direct building & overhead costs, land, building code compliance, regulatory costs, and the costs of legal and bureaucratic delays.

Maybe housing the homeless in the most expensive places in the country to live is a bad idea.

> and each state is free to... or to coordinate with other states on solutions.

This can't be solved without coordination, ie. federal government.

What makes you think it can be solved at the national level when it can't even be solved at the city level?

Cities don’t have border gates. As the article states, the number of homeless people is increasing at a higher rate than other population growth factor. SF is taking on the burden of a full state and some of the country.

Is your belief falsifiable?

What would you have to see before you might start to think San Francisco's policies might be part of the problem?

SF is willingly taking on that burden. All of SF's policies have only made homelessness worse, not better.

I don’t debate that. My answer was to the original question.

Generally speaking spending more money on something will get you more of it. Why would homelessness be any different?

I mean the person just argued that it has to be solved at the national level. I think willingness of homeless people to stay in small to medium sized towns with bad winters depends on accessibility of student and tourist populations, but those balance of factors means they sleep in the snow to get their support, but the small town doesn't want to build a shelter and provide extra incentive to stay.

My guess is you agree that is has to be solved at the national level? The federal government has spent over $20 trillion to fight the war on poverty since 1965. You really thinking throwing more money at the problem will solve homelessness?

Just money? No. Money doesn't ever solve problems. The effective use of said money does. You can't find effective uses for money without trying to see what works. Most cities have homeless if some sort. My small city has a homeless population and it took my church guaranteeing to donating time just to keep people alive in the winter. The mayor here routinely destroys places where the homeless live and takes all their resources in the middle of winter. Does our effort help? It keeps a lot of them stay alive over the winter. We also have a community meal on Saturdays to give people community and companionship. No government here helping, but it does require a lot of time and money.

It is extremely difficult to clean up and heal surrounded by the problems of the city (drugs, violence, lack of entry level jobs & housing) but services are concentrated in city...

The drug problems in rural America are worse than in urban areas, fueled by the additional joblessness, lack of mental health services and general boredom.

I lived in SF for 20 years and now live in NYC. I see young homeless people here all the time but they generally look very down and out. The ones you see that are care free with the dogs are more "travelers" that benefit from the good weather on the west coast.

A lot of the more permenant homeless population in SF are mentally ill with nowhere to go.

They have them in NYC. They hang out around Union Square during the summer.

Some (many? most?) of these kids are homeless by choice, it's a subculture as much as circumstance. They flock to the Bay Area (Berkeley/Oakland, and the Haight area) to be a part of the scene.

"Homeless by choice" is a long disproven myth. There are exceptions, of course, but often young people experiencing homelessness are on the streets because they were explicitly forced out of their homes by their guardians or were forced out because of sexual abuse.

From an article in Hoodline, quoting Mary Howe, founder of the Homeless Youth Alliance,

> [San Francisco's Haight Street] is an international destination for youth who come seeking refuge from abusive families, alienating foster care and group home situations, and juvenile justice system involvement. These homeless young people encounter constant threats to both their physical and mental health while on the streets.

https://hoodline.com/2015/03/getting-to-know-haight-street-k...

OP was asking why you see so many of them in SF compared to other places. Obviously there's a reason they chose that lifestyle but they still chose it. These kids are traveling from across the world to be part of it.

Yeah, they're often referred to as "crust punks" or "crusties" (and I think that's the name they use for themselves). Plenty of articles about them- absolutely homeless by choice, and migrate up/ down the East Coast (often by hopping freight rail) seasonally https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2018/07/27/summer-brings-wave-o...

They are also a huge drag on resources designated for homelessness.

Yeah- I have a ton of sympathy for folks driven in to homelessness by economic hardship, or mental illness, or even addiction, but the crust punks are INCREDIBLY frustrating for a number of reasons (the one you mention being a big one)

A crust punk once told me "Why bother when I could work full time in a city that's worth living in to be almost this homeless."

They are homeless, in my experience with them.

That shouldn’t be considered homeless then. I thought homeless meant you have no permanent place to live. Not by choice, but you just don’t.

Why is it such a simple dichotomy? Most people have to make large efforts to maintain a legal shelter and it's as easy as a medical emergency to slip from the tenuous position of not being homeless.

Are you saying the person with the medical emergency who becomes homeless was always homeless? Otherwise perhaps I didn’t understand your reply.

Regardless you’re right it’s not a simple dichotomy. Similar to how if you’re living in a new Airstream, chances are you aren’t the same sort of homeless as someone in a runned down camper with little cash flow or savings.

Agreed. There is one more interesting fact about this subculture. Some of those "homeless" people do actually have their own places that they don't want to live in. They rent out and live on the street by choice.

I can’t imagine anyone choosing to be exposed to that level of risk of disease, violence, weather and conflict with the authorities, at least not in a big city.

It's not just California. You see the same homeless population in Santa Cruz as you do in Eugene. But these visible homeless are a tiny fraction; what we're talking about here are people living in cars and RVs.

Yeah I think the problem with viability is also, some 'homeless' in SF are actually housed, they're just poor n scruffy.

Last three years though I'm seeing people that are homeless and not scruffy. Friend of a friend was living in a panel truck with her 6 year old daughter for a year.

My solution is fairly simple, force the tech companies to direct their firehose of free cash somewhere else like Detroit or Albuquerque.

There is a spectrum of choice when it comes to homelessness. One extreme are those with severe mental and physical disabilities and the other is... https://vanlifecustoms.com/vans

There are quite a few people who actively aspire to live in vans on the streets of the bay area. There are more who are on the end of having other options (but don't want to, say, have a connivance store job in a small midwest town) but don't take them for whatever reason. If you had a few resources, wouldn't you rather try to make your way to live in SF instead of NY, especially in January?

Being young makes it more likely that the lifestyle is a choice and when it isn't, being young makes it easier to migrate to the best possible place to be homeless.

We can debate about definitions, but I wouldn't call people living out of expensive, customized vans homeless.

Those people still have a roof over their heads. They just don't have a mailing address.

EDIT: I stand corrected. Apparently, San Francisco does count those among the homeless.

> The number of people living in cars and campers grew — a big part of the reason the number of unsheltered people increased, the city said.

A lot of those, I expect the vast majority of them, are in a regular 4 door sedan, or a shitty old camper that barely runs. People living in cars, on a friends couch, etc, all count as homeless.

The streets in the peninsula are lined with campers and vans in varying levels of decay, but mostly functional if a bit unclean.

I've been thinking about doing a dashcam of 10 miles of El Camino Real to show the extent to people unfamiliar.

I'd love to see that. When a video surfaced a few years back, of the Santa Ana riverbed behind the Big A in Anaheim, it was much easier to share the video with family and friends who were unfamiliar than it was to try to explain what I was seeing (I stopped into that particular tent city a couple of times searching for an ill family member who contends with bouts of homelessness).

In San Jose there are/were several on ramps to 280 and 101 lined with tents where people lived last time I was in the neighborhood. It's kind of mind-blowing the first time you see people living like that here.

Not sure what you're saying, sounds like you're agreeing that they aren't living in "expensive, customized vans"?

Really that many vans? 10 miles?

I thought it’s anecdotal

Yes it's really that many. The vans and campers tend to move around to different areas as the police crack down on illegal long-term parking in particular spots.

It is not 10 miles bumper to bumper, but in that 10 miles you will see very many apparent vehicle residences.

The cities that have to manage the people living on their streets in vans (usually much less fancy) can't treat them as anything but homeless.

Anecdotally, you will also see this in Denver; however, we have Winter, so it is not year-round.

And Boulder. Take a walk down Pearl Street Mall and you'll see "lifestyle homeless"

You can still sometimes see groups of young (teen-ish to 20-ish) homeless people in Harvard Square, including with dogs sometimes, though not as much as you used to. There at least used to be a mobile health clinic that would visit "The Pit" area around the Harvard Square subway station, where young homeless kids would congregate. (Also, non-homeless kids, such as from affluent suburbs, hanging out and being cool/punk/real with the homeless. But some of them actually are homeless, maybe escaping from rough family situations.) I understand there recently is/was a dotcom-y charitable homeless shelter in Harvard Square (unless it already disappeared; sometimes projects fail, or are career steps).

Cambridge, Boston, and Massaschusetts are wealthy, and good about social programs and safety nets for the poor, by overall US standards. But the winters get cold, so a lot of homeless who are able might go to the SF Bay Area.

I saw young homeless people in Montréal about 15 years ago. I don't remember if they were happy or if they had dogs. But I think they were anarchists living out some sort of lifestyle choice. I don't recall seeing any of this when I visited last year.

Yes there are very few visible homeless people or beggars in downtown Montreal.

Uh... how many places have you lived in and for how long, and how much contact have you had with the homeless? And when we say homeless, what do you mean? Those who temporarily don't have homes, those don't want to live in a permanent structure, etc.

I've lived in the South, New England, Texas, and California. There are homeless people every where. Before you conclude that the demographics are actually different (I'm not disputing it is -- California is different but not as stark as you may think), ensure that your observations aren't biased (I don't mean personal bias but some places put more effort into hiding their homeless population).

It happens in Hawai'i, too. I volunteer at a homeless shelter and routinely serve young people. Some of them have nicer clothes than I do.

There is an episode of Portlandia satirizing young homeless people too, so I'd imagine that is another example.

I thought that this was an issue on the entire West Coast and not just California.

The people of CA exporting their failed public policy is an issue that covers the entire west coast (and Nevada, Colorado and parts of Texas) to it's no surprise that the homelessness problem follows.

You're adding nothing to the discussion with unsubstantiated claims.

A "hurr durr" would have sufficed.

I didn't realize that Texas is part of the West Coast.

The only failed public policy is the one that creates such a jaw-dropping amount of homelessness in a country with 11 million millionaires.

And that failed public policy isn't prop 13. It's a policy of expecting cities to deal with their homeless problems.

Nah, it's pretty much prop 13.

Nonsense.

Neither Seattle or Vancouver have prop 13, and they are dealing with a homelessness crisis. Neither does Hawaii, Vegas, etc.

What they all have in common is a federal government that doesn't give a shit.

The young homeless people I knew on the East Coast were almost universally "travelers". They'd hop trains to Florida in the winter and migrate north in the summer. Most of the East Coast is inhospitable at one time of the year or another -- when the low temperature is above 70 F (20 C) or below 30 F (0 C) it can be very hard to sleep outside.

Would you rather spend winter in NYC or SF? Would you rather spend summer in Atlanta or SF?

Other cities building shelters on the outskirts, and often in areas without public transit access, so that people get off the streets and are out of sight. The weather patterns almost everywhere else in the country also drive people into those shelters, either with extreme heat or cold.

Here, there is never a time of year when people have to get off the streets, and we don't have enough beds for them even if they did. The Bay Area is also a huge sprawl, so it isn't clear where we would build such housing to be out of sight and out of mind even if we were going to.

> I never saw this in NYC or anywhere else on the East Coast or in the Midwest.

Human beings have a tough time surviving when exposed to the elements, and winter lasts for 6 months in the North East and Midwest. It is difficult to live when you are soaking wet and it is 34 degrees outside.

Hope this helps.

Also very prevalent in Boulder.

Boulder and Denver have cold, but it's mild enough that it can be dealt with somewhat using coats, blankets, sleeping bags, and tents. It doesn't have heat in the summers like New York City or Chicago do, or most of the year like Atlanta, Houston, and Miami do. 20 degrees below room temperature is much easier to handle than 20 degrees above room temperature, because there isn't anything wearable that protects people from heat like coats protect people from cold.

We see a good number of young homeless people in Denver.

It's mostly the weather. I prefer the weather in Miami to the weather in SF by just a little bit, but if I were homeless, it wouldn't even come close. I would vastly prefer the weather in SF.

The weather is a big factor in peoples' decisions to move places. It's near the top of the list in any discussion on which city people would prefer to live in on the city-data forums. People who aren't homeless take the air conditioning or heating for granted when comparing the weather in two different cities.

The weather in the Bay Area in general is pretty pleasant, but San Francisco in particular seems to be a bit of a local minimum, with the foggy and frequently quite cold weather even in summer. As we used to remind our guests before taking them to SF: "There's a reason why there are so many tourists wearing San Francisco branded fleece jackets".

I thought about it, and AFAICT it only widens the gap between ideal weather for a homeless person and ideal weather for a non-homeless person. For a homeless person, Walnut Creek is going to be worse during the winter because it's cold, and worse during the summer because it's hot. For a non-homeless person, San Francisco is going to be worse during the June Gloom because they might be stuck in an office during the times that the sun comes out.

This phenomenon exists in Phoenix / Tempe as well. Most likely due to weather [as noted below] and relatively high population

some of the younger homeless folks are that by choice. The largest % of the population isn't though.

The abundance of young homeless with dogs also appears to be a thing in France.

Weather?