To a close approximation, all of the "rough" homeless (i.e. the ones you see on the street) are mentally ill or addicts, not people down on their luck who cannot afford to rent or buy a home.

Most people with drug addiction or other mental illnesses have no problem keeping a roof over their head in other parts of the US. 20% of Americans experience mental illness any given year.

most use to be

The chronically homeless are incapable of benefiting from affordable housing because that's not why they're homeless in the first place. It's pretty much always mental health, drug and alcohol addiction.

If that were the case we wouldn't see the chronically homeless all disproportionately clustered around areas where housing costs have exploded, and it's not just because of money spent on services there.

The homeless are always going to flock to where the people with money are.

It does seem counterintuitive, but when your local economy is shit (i.e. panhandling in ghettos), you're going to emigrate somewhere with more opportunity.

That does not explain SF's homelessness.

>> 70% of people homeless in San Francisco in 2019 reported becoming homeless while living in San Francisco: 22% came from another county within California, and 8% came from another state.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_San_Fran...

This has been my experience. Most "normal" people will just move somewhere else. They're not going to stay homeless in SF when they can move 100 miles away and live in a safe town with a roof over their head.