Why are there so many homeless people on the street in San Francisco? Usually in rich areas, they keep homeless people off the street.?

Housing costs in SF are the highest in the US. Once you lose you housing it is very difficult to find and afford a new place to live.

For the most part the weather in CA is much more conducive to living outdoors than other states.

Some of the people on the street are there because they lost their jobs, can't find a new one and have no cash to relocate. The largest proportion of people on the streets are those with mental health and substance abuse problems that keep them from staying housed.

Cuts in social services all over the state [thank you ronnie regan] mean there there are fewer services for the mentally ill thus they end up out on the street.

The rich folks have pull with the local government so their "issues" get addressed before any other neighborhoods.

If you are staying in the main tourist/business areas the homeless congregate there because there are more people that than can panhandle or con for money/food/clothing.

By far the largest per capita homeless population I've seen in my 37 years in CA is Santa Barbara. Compact size, gigh cost of living, very few above minimum wage jobs [college town huge pool of people willing to work for less pay] and the weather is such that people can live on the beach year round.

Rich areas are quiet residential neighborhoods where homeless people have nothing to do. In the tourist areas they can panhandle for money.

People want to analyze the question to death. Fox News watchers (who are deathly afraid of California) want to blame the usual suspects. Surely the changing economy is a factor. It is a simple fact that coastal California has long been a magnet for vagrants of all kinds for one simple reason: the weather.

They dont live in rich neighborhoods. They are downtown or in run down locations or streets they have trashed. The local government wont do anything about it and the police cant arrest them.

I'm surprised that places like Chicago and NYC have homeless people. How do they get through winter sleeping outdoors? I could never do it. I'd be dead in a week! I have a penpal who lives in British Columbia, hundreds of miles north of Vancouver, and he says there are homeless people THERE! They live in winters that are routinely 10-20 below zero!

Say what you like about San Francisco (and I know you will) but there, or even LA, are at least survivable. We've seen them for years, sleeping in doorways, asking to pump your gas for you or clean your car windows, selling their newspaper on street corners. We were lost once, looking for an address in downtown San Francisco, when a homeless person asked what we were looking for. He took us into a liquor store right there on the block where he knew the owner, and got him to draw a map for us! I gave him $5. He earned it! Another guy, who'd just been laid off a month ago, asked if he could clean all the windows on my car when I stopped for gas. he did a better job than I would have! I gave him $5 too and he protested that it was too much!

A friend of mine worked at a KFC in a ritzy neighborhood in SF (Union St). They were required by law and corporate policy to throw out a lot of perfectly good chicken at closing time, so they decided to wrap it up, put it in clean white paper bags, and stack it on top of the closed dumpster so homeless people could eat it. This is the attitude you find in 'liberal' states where we don't demonize the poor or minorities.

But your'e right--they don't tolerate homeless so well in the richer residential neighborhoods. Because they're unsightly. But these same people vote to spend more money on shelters and food operations.

Because the weather is mild and lots of people probably hand them money.

The People's Socialist Republic of California is a failed state. You know who to vote for in 2020