This is a common theory but it isn't true. There are a lot of homeless people in San Fransisco because there are a lot of people there and it's hard to afford a home.
From a huge recent survey of homelessness in California:
> Nine out of ten participants lost their last housing in California; 75% of participants lived in the same county as their last housing.
This data is st00pid. It relies on self-reporting, and the questions are coached to get the "required" result.
A while ago I did an experiment, I found the list of people convicted for typical "homeless" crimes in SF, and did a background search on them. About 90% had extensive crime records in other states, far away from CA.
This is not a definitive result for sure, but it's suggestive.
Either you are lying or the mainstream media is lying. I am not having ANY luck with mainstream media, but I can't just trust you either. Show me your data.
> Nearly 95% of people arrested for drug use in San Francisco since May 30 are from out of town, Police Chief Bill Scott said at a public hearing this week, corroborating perceptions that many residents already have — that their city has become a magnet for the narcotics trade.
Honestly, just do the same exercise, get the booking records from jails and run background search on the names.
2. Even if you believe them, this is about who they chose to arrest during a two week period in one small neighborhood. You can't get any more cherry-picked than that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Homeless in SF are just people who got evicted because the rent is 5% too high. Of course.
> 2. Even if you believe them, this is about who they chose to arrest during a two week period in one small neighborhood. You can't get any more cherry-picked than that.
> 3. This doesn't even mention homeless people.
My understanding is that "living in the same county as your last housing" can mean that you moved to California with enough money to rent a room for a month before running out. Though, I have seen many other surveys that do indicate that most unhoused individuals have lived in the area for an extended period before factors forced them out (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/us/homeless-population.ht...).
In any event, I feel that metric used by UCSF is really not a good one to the point where it's almost dishonest. It's not hard to come up with questions that do a better job at trying to answer whether CA is burdened by individuals moving from out-of-state to make use of more generous social programs and/or lax drug policy.
From a huge recent survey of homelessness in California:
> Nine out of ten participants lost their last housing in California; 75% of participants lived in the same county as their last housing.
https://homelessness.ucsf.edu/sites/default/files/2023-06/CA...