Also, the data disagrees with the general sentiment of "Mental Health" issues amongst Homeless people. Only 5% were homeless because of mental health problems. Most of them, almost a quarter are homeless because they lost their job.
Basically, many things in this report goes against the general opinion of people of the Bay Area. Misinformed public leads to misinformed decision making and policies.
Responding to GP:
> I don't think the mess in San Francisco is entirely due to local policies. I think the nation as a whole needs substantially more affordable housing.
This is wrong. It is precisely due to the policies of SF city. The sooner people realize and accept the faults of San Francisco city's governance, the better it will be for the city. Same lessons can be applied to Portland (used to be ranked 3rd in the nation according to Oregonian, now it is ranked a whopping 66th out of 80), Seattle, and Los Angeles.
To OP - thank you for the link, it's illuminating.
> Also, the data disagrees with the general sentiment of "Mental Health" issues amongst Homeless people. Only 5% were homeless because of mental health problems. Most of them, almost a quarter are homeless because they lost their job.
The same study also quotes (p. 28): "Seventy-four percent (74%) of respondents reported living with one or more health conditions, compared to 68% in 2017. These conditions included chronic physical illnesses, physical disabilities, chronic substance use, and severe mental health conditions. Sixty-nine percent (69%) of respondents reported their condition limited their ability to hold a job, live in stable housing, or take care of themselves, compared to 53% in 2017."
This points to the fact that regular, long-term medical care is the singular issue in the homeless. I had no idea that things were that bad. 15% have a traumatic brain injury? Holy hell.
That's absolutely correct. San Francisco should be a city lined with gold given the wealth and income base. Given its fortunate context it should be more like Singapore and a lot less like a slightly nicer Los Angeles.
No permanent address is self reported. In general those who aren't employable are unreliable for self-assessments as to why (although I don't doubt the lack of address is a hinderance -- for sure it would be).
Similarly, lost job tells us little about the bigger picture. What led to them being a lost job away from being homeless? Was it living beyond their means? No family? No friends willing to take them in? Being raised poor with no social net and working jobs making no money?
You have to really do a deep analysis to get in deeper to understand how people ended up in the situation they did, what roads they could have taken but didn't, what are societal ills that brought them there, and thus what to ultimately do about any of it.
Given the amount of money ($1B+) SF spends on homeless yearly, personally I wish we could find a way to use that to actually do something WPA style and employ them to do various jobs to actually improve things (and hopefully their life as well) versus just continue to maintain status quo.
You're right, depending on how you itemize things. However, there's $1B+ spent on human welfare and neighborhood development [1], much of which crosses over in one way or another either supporting the homeless or trying to not make people homeless with programs like food banks. If you look at where that's going [2], you'll see the areas with the highest unemployment are getting most of these funds.
