What San Francisco Says About America
I moved to SF in the early 90s. I think you can pin the large homeless population on several things. One is the climate. If you had to pick a place to be homeless, this would be one of the best places. Another is it is relatively safe compared to other cities. But most importantly you can blame Ronald Reagan for dismantling the states mental health infrastructure. Institutionalizing people has its downsides, but its more humane than letting people overdose on a sidewalk. It also doesn't help that other municipalities have a habit of dumping their social services burdens on San Francisco (one way buses from Nevada, etc). I don't see anything changing until we have a national or at least regional mental health system that can actually deal with the scale of the problem.