A commonly repeated falsehood. Is totally incorrect. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Bu...
San Francisco absolutely has a Homeless industrial complex that isn't trying to solve the problem but just keep their cash flowing.
It seems pretty fair to say that being off by 10x is "totally incorrect".
SF is expensive for sure, but that expensive? Where is the money going to?
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-california-rent/palo-alto...
It sounds dumb but IIRC it's an attempt to have teachers and police and city employees able to live there...
I live in SoCal so I thought you would even see more homeless migrants because of the weather. However, from speaking with homeless I would say in my experience most have lived in the area for a long time, with only one beach bum guy I spoke with who actually was "fresh off the bus". Until I saw the statistics though I was also under this misconception.
Anyway, hospitality isn’t really a question of weather as Alaska for example has relatively high rate of homelessness and NYC one of the highest. Mississippi on the other hand has the lowest rate despite mild winters and significant poverty.
The stigmatization and criminalization of not paying taxes to lease a deed of property is a big problem, this planet as a whole belongs to all forms of life inhabiting it, not just the primates that choose to play that game.
This problem was working much better in the 70s and 80s when their was a national framework for it. While SF and LA's government is flawed, this blame state/city is like blaming the individual ushers when the fans run on the field after a football upset. It was more of a structural failure than a local.
Or, the same data with a very hard to read circular bar graph visualization:
https://howmuch.net/articles/federal-budget-receipts-and-exp...
The numbers are actually pretty straightforward. "Expenditures is a broad category and covers a variety of things, including direct payments to people like Social Security, contracts for local governments, wages for federal workers and sub-contracting work."
From an accounting standpoint, gross money in be money out is what matters. Per capita makes sense to compare relative benefit, but realistically Montana is small potatoes on the Federal Balance sheet. Measuring per sq mile seems like some ludicrous ploy by Alaska’s senator to screw over New Jersey.
Infrastructure costs are U shaped where extreme density is expensive, but so very low density. Mail delivery is a clear example where ultra low density just makes things more expensive.
The selective "my tax dollars would never" is anti-american
Unfortunately I don't believe something like that is practical unless it's done on a national level.
See this recent documentary by KOMO News in Seattle about their problems, which are pretty similar to Portland's, SF's, LA's and a lot of other major cities with larger homeless populations. Crime is soaring. Most are homeless due to drug addiction. Until that part is solved and they can think clearly and rationalize normally again, giving them cash will likely only fuel the problem and keep them right where they're at. And with everyone walking around with $50k cash in their pocket, because they don't have bank accounts, crime would be even more rampant as they steal it from each other.
I don't really buy that money would fuel the problem, is there any study that indicates that? They'd still be drug addicts, but they'd be more comfortable, well fed drug addicts which makes things better for everyone.
If anything I think money for a place, clean clothes, and food would make it much easier to get off drugs.
Anyway, saying it's a mental health problem is really reductive. Plenty of people with the same problems aren't homeless; some of these people can potentially dig themselves out if given a chance, most importantly a place to live.