I literally just moved out of a west coast city due to the homelessness problem, and homeless camps changed my commute habits on bike and foot. While I am OK going by a homeless camp on bike/foot solo, I stopped taking my family through them after some sketchy encounters. I was lucky that I didn't need to change my bike commute with my kid due to camps, but that was because I could take some alternate routes to his school. If I wanted to completely avoid homeless camps on my bike commute, I would have had to increase my commute distance by about 30%. Not only that, but it's whack-a-mole. The smaller camps move around alot. Also as a bicyclist, you notice that the bike lanes are problematic near any campsites due to broken glass and needles. I am positive many people consider this when deciding whether to start or to continue being a bike commuter, at least in west coast cities with big homeless populations.

I know many people that still live in the city, and people that moved away. Of my coworkers, all but one with kids moved out of the city when we went full remote, all cited homelessness and school quality as the top two issues. Homelessness is absolutely a big deal when making livable neighborhoods that people want to be in, whether or not you can find ways to "make it work" is beside the point.

Yeah, encampments of people and areas strewn with needles are a little more to deal with than the occasional homeless person or group. My city had its share of homeless and drug, and we'd find the occasional needle, but it was part of the fabric of the area, not its definition.

Most western cities doesn't have these kind of areas as there simply aren't homeless people enough to live there. With a working social security net it wouldn't need to be accounted for in the planning at all.

No disagreement at all, but given the choice of sticking it out and doing needle sweeps of the playground before letting my kid play, or moving to a city that doesn't have that problem, guess which one was the easy decision?

In other words, don't conflate my lack of desire to spend another year dealing with homeless people as a lack of desire to find real solutions to homelessness. It's a 20 year problem, my kids will be grown up before it's not an issue anymore.

I lived in the inner city and in some of the neighborhoods I lived in you simply wouldn't walk around. Not at night, not during the day, not anywhere other than from the front door to the car.

You must have lived in a different kind of inner city than I did.

It was convenient and efficient not to be assaulted.