Unfortunately, the situation is so bad in San Francisco that even a very conservative, moralist, and generalizing article such as this happens to make quite valid observations and arguments.

At this point I don't think there's any serious public disagreement that the city's policies of radical tolerance of drug use and refusal to pursue forced treatment of the mentally ill has become too extreme and counter-productive. There are plenty of politicians, perhaps most of them, that would swing the pendulum back. But generations of rhetoric regarding the history of forced institutionalization, War on Drugs, and minority discrimination, has been internalized. Not just the sad truth of it, but the rhetoric, divorced from the reality of that history and thus impenetrable to reassurances of a changed context. So whenever the city tries to change course it's far too easy for political opportunists to inflame passions and stoke cynicism, making the political risk of change intolerable.

For example, Mayor London breed opposed a bond measure to raise more money for homeless housing, drug treatment, etc. She opposed it because as a newly incoming mayor she wanted to the ability to use the prospect of more money as leverage for reform. That is, she supported a bond measure in principle, but not until some policy reforms were in place to insure the money would be more effective. But opportunists and activists outside the political process pushed ahead, which meant all the various departments and political interests knew they had money coming without having to seriously reckon with their manifest ineffectiveness. And the public were willing to just throw more money at the situation--anything to just make it go away--because they've internalized the rhetoric that the homeless and drug use problems are purely structural; they were overly credulous of promises that things would change with just another round of new money.

It's a very unfortunate state of affairs, and in many ways I see similarities to how, on a national scale, generations of conservative rhetoric has been internalized to some non-negligible degree by the entire country, which has in turn resulted in an extreme rightist element effectively being able to drive the national narrative.

EDIT: Removed the "[now ancient]" qualifier on the history of forced institutionalization, in case people thought I meant it to apply to minority discrimination.

One particular inconsistency in the article is that it intersperses mentions of a sizeable mentally ill homeless population with an expectation and recommendation that they can be supported or housed in a manner that requires these people to accept responsibility for themselves and keep to a "single standard of behavior for all" - which is not really compatible with many of the involved mental illnesses.

The author does mention relevant aspects of multiple different subgroups, but still suggests various universal "solutions" that might work for one group but obviously can't work for another.

>>"You aren't, for instance, going to get a homeless person who doesn't do drugs"

what does that even mean (like they only abuse alcohol?)?

There are not thousands but 10s of thousands of discarded needles being cleaned up monthly and weekly (https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/09/04/the-city-picks-...)

>> Feels like an inherently biased sort of investigation.

this is a weird call out.

What is the proposed alternative here?

> what does that even mean (like they only abuse alcohol?)?

Only about 35% of the homeless population has an addiction. Less than half of the homeless population neither has an addiction nor a mental illness. [1] Just because there is lots of substance abuse (and yes, there certainly is), doesn't mean that the average homeless person does drugs. When you talk about the homeless population, you have to include people who are really quite like you but had a bad turn. Many of them have a story like "I got a mortgage with a large down payment just before 2008, when I lost my job and then shortly my house. I had to go to the streets because I had nowhere else to go."

[1]: https://sunrisehouse.com/addiction-demographics/homeless-pop...

There's ambiguity between the formal classification of homelessness as used by the city and organizations, and other connotations such as the street homeless. People across the spectrum seem to abuse this and similar terminological ambiguity to suit their particular argument or rhetorical point.

There's also the fact that self-reporting regarding things like previous residence, drug use, etc is unreliable. I've always found it odd that some people on HN are so credulous of these numbers even though in other contexts they'd be the first to point out that self-reported data makes bad science.

This doesn't mean the numbers are wrong, just that we should have very large error bars which grow as we make inferences. If we combine ambiguity regarding homelessness with an already substantial number like 35%, and tack on issues like mental illness, it's hardly a stretch to say that drug use and mental illness are the principle problems for the seeming intractability of street homeless reduction.

I am extremely skeptical of the 35% number.

>>Less than half of the homeless population neither has an addiction nor a mental illness.

Above quote implies close to half. I just find it hard to believe.

If a person is otherwise "functional" (or as you say "like you") I would really want to know more about their situation if their time on the street is longer than one month.

For contrast id like to point out that in the cases of migrant caravans comprised of THOUSANDS (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/10/20/migrant...) of people and families. Caravan migrants are so poor they cant afford a bus/train ticket. As far as i know most of those people do not WALK to the US to sleep on the streets. As far as i know they are able to find housing.

Just to recap people with almost no education/English/money and minimal social network DO NOT endup on the streets of major cities in their thousands.

I make a point of this - because for this problem to get resolved we have to think critically about what the problem actually is.

And to be super clear - we absolutely need a better safety net for people who fell on hard times and could no longer keep their previously expensive home.

But also we need to be clear about the causes of homelessness we see in major US cities.

I was homeless for 9 month in Paris (until i got my first internship), i did not live on the street, i slept at my school or took friends beds when they were out of town, and i think most homeless do the same. And i was not alone, i think we were ~20 to do the out of 400 students. None of us had addiction (i can't tell about mental issue, after all we wanted to be devs).

I went to San Francisco 3 years ago with my familly and my sister made some homeless friends. They were not living in the street but in their cars, they had low-pay (or illegal) jobs and did not seems to have any addictions.

I think this is a definition issue. Homeless just mean you don't have a home.