Wikipedia tells me there are some 500,000 homeless in all of the United States. At $30,000 per year per homeless person, that would amount to $15 billion for all homeless in the US. Certainly a lot of money, but doable for an individual locality like California if people really wanted to do it. (So much that they'd accept a 10% increase of all taxes to make it happen.)

Of course spending the money more efficiently would be preferable, but additional resources spent the same way would also work.

> that would amount to $15 billion for all homeless in the US

We are already spending, as a nation, much more than this. We spend roughly $3B federally directly on homelessness (not including other programs aimed at poverty that provide assistance). California spends $1B. California localities spend $3B. New York City spends $3B alone.

These are just governmental expenditures, aimed directly at homelessness, and ignore charitable efforts.

Then I wonder how direct that spending really is. It doesn't seem to involve handing out money to homeless directly... Does it just end up in a general budget that's labeled "homeless", but actually gets used for all kinds of projects?

A lot of it used to be direct cash assistance to the homeless. This did not work well. The trend has been towards providing services.

One caveat with the analysis is that your census of homeless people does not count the people housed as a result of these programs. It also doesn't count the number of people that would have to be served that are not presently considered homeless.

The key would be that all US cities/towns/villages take care of their homeless instead of busing them to California. I can see the financial incentive - a bus ticket is like, what, couple hundred tops across the country? while the police, healthcare and other resources in a single year can easily reach five to six figures - but morally it is absolutely disgusting behavior.

Ideally federal agencies should take care of this and make sure that every US citizen in need is taken care of where he lives.

At the very least we need to strictly regulate programs that bus homeless other places.

Yes, there are circumstances where throwing someone on a bus to a locality where he has some family or other connections is the best move for all involved. But we need to make sure that is actually the case, not based on some tenuous connection and a desire to displace the costly individual somewhere else.

This isn't enough, though. Even without explicit governmental support to move, homeless people know that there are localities where it's "better" to be homeless and will move themselves.

> At the very least we need to strictly regulate programs that bus homeless other places.

That is close to impossible, I'm afraid. And even if federal regulation prohibits the executive branch from such programs, I guarantee that it will be replaced by some "church", neighborhood watch, political action group or whatever...