My mother works with elderly drug addicts[1], and all whom's met moved to the city as young adults, either in search of drugs or having fallen into the drug culture. I don't think she's encountered any veterans, but San Francisco has certainly been a drug haven since the 1960s, the drug culture has destroyed countless lives, and no doubt there are plenty of veterans among that cohort.

Have things gotten worse, recently? The addict population definitely has grown over the past 20 years; even the older addicts will tell you that. But the city has also greatly gentrified over that time and has seen significant demographic shifts, including decreases in communities which historically saw most of the violent crime. There are plenty of statistics to throw around to support whatever claim you want.

[1] She works for IHSS, a combined Federal and State program that provides elderly requiring living assistance (e.g. cleaning, grocery shopping, accompanying on medical appointments, etc) with an allowance to pay care workers--it works both as assistance for poorer elderly, and as a work program for everybody else. There are IHSS-like programs across the country. But in San Francisco the vast majority of people receiving IHSS allowances seem to be former or often current drug users. I think she's only had one client who wasn't an addict.

Half of the problem is that San Francisco- and the bay area as a whole- ignores their drug and homeless problem. Ironically the drug rate in San Francisco matches that of most large cities, but you don't see the problem in other cities because most of the drug users do it in the homes rather than on the street.

The bay area has the lowest rate of homeless shelters per capita of any major metro in the united states. Whether you're talking Atlanta, Miami, or Boston (regardless of weather), every other city has more homeless shelters and programs to house people. This gets people off of the streets and, at a minimum, gets them in a place where they can take advantage of other programs to deal with health and addiction problems.

In the bay area these people stay on the streets while hundreds of charities get small amounts of money to help, but with no real central coordination or group that's in charge of spending that money effectively. As a result you've got a ton of people on the streets, as well as all the consequences of that.

I suspect a reason for the lack of homeless shelters is a lack of urgency- elsewhere in the country, it is dangerous to be outside for extended periods due to either heat or cold, depending on where you are and the time of year.

People- both on the streets and in control politically, don't have much urgency in providing shelters as a result.

I do agree there's a lack of urgency, but I don't think that's related to the weather. I think it's more than weather, as even other cities in good weather areas manage to do better than the bay area.

It’s because it’s impossible to get approval to build anything or even change uses.

Yeah I think this is a huge part of it. I'm in Chicago now and there's construction everywhere all the time. The Bay Area won't build housing, which drives up the cost of land and housing everywhere else in the area. This makes it harder to build shelters.

California is 48th in the US for veterans per capita so I sorta doubt veterans make up even a few percent of those