I too want to believe in a deeper conspiracy around this shitshow, but occam's razor says that it's probably a mix of:

* it's a hard problem to solve

* nobody wants to solve that problem

* it's a national crisis, not just an SF crisis

* people are incompetent and governments are slow to move (and rarely make use of data correctly)

* things generally tend to get better only after they get worse

landlords

You got downvoted but this is true.

It's not a deliberate relationship, but housing prices correlate with homelessness. If landlords and property owners see their properties increase in value, that means that people on the margins are becoming homeless.

Landlords want to keep people homeless ...

Landlords ... who make money from people paying to rent their units, want to deliberately keep would-be customers from handing over their money.

The established rich.

Solutions require money, which requires taxes.

The wealthy benefit by doing nothing about homelessness as taxes are kept low and the problem of homelessness is kettled into some tiny district far away from their leafy suburbs where they never have to see it.