Well, I’ll put it this way. I doubt you can tell the difference between the Downtown East Vancouver and the Tenderloin in SF.

I think the point is, you can lead a horse to water, but you cant make them drink. If people don’t want to stop using drugs, then they won’t.

Free healthcare, free counseling, free clean drugs and a generous social safety is clearly not going to solve this problem.

According to the link I provided Vancouver has ~1/10th the homeless per 10,000 vs. SF; 9 vs. 92.

That's substantially moving the needle.

Statistics are nice, but like I said, take a stroll around the Tenderloin, then the DTES of Vancouver and tell me if there is a difference.

The level of human misery seems about the same to me.

“Data is nice, but my perception is what’s really important.”

Oh come on. I never argued that Vancouver had more homeless per capita. Not to mention the challenge with accurately counting the homeless and where the homeless reside (these stats counted Vancouver proper, which ignores the homeless in the surrounding cities).

I argued that the state of the homeless is no different (because OP argued "you just need universal healthcare and the problem will be solved). People putting up tents in the street, people overdosing on the sidewalk (did you know 10,000 people have died from overdoses in Vancouver to date? [1]), people suffering from untreated mental illness, people suffering from serious medical issues.

The point is not that Vancouver and SF have the same number of homeless, it's that the areas where the homeless are don't look all that different in terms of human misery.

[1] https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2022PSSG0056-001250