These problems don't exist in NEARLY the same magnitude in the rest of the country. Fucking Detroit is a much nicer place to be than Seattle now, because _they're working on fixing their problems_. Seattle just blames Trump and warns against hobophobia, then continues along blindly.

These cities also have a housing affordability issue. They all refuse to build enough housing - especially mixed development. It’s not really a shock as to why homelessness is rising when you literally can’t afford a roof and everything else gets more expensive because of landlords leaching all the money out of the economy.

> a lack of a social safety net

That is so easy to disprove. SF spends 1.1B on homelessness (more than 50K per homeless person). Federal government spends 6-700B on medicaid (health services for poor). California's 2022-23 spending plan provides over $25 billion from the General Fund for human services programs.

Maybe, you can complain that that spending is "inefficient", but that becomes a political barb-trading after that.

It's replicated all over America, because the zoning policies adopted in the 70s-90s have proven disastrous, but Seattle is absolutely responsible for its part in failing to build enough housing to keep up with growth.