I've seen estimates that it costs up to $80k/year in the Bay Area to give a homeless person housing and treat their underlying mental illness, substance addiction and other health issues. So for 8,000 homeless we're taking about $700million per year liability. You can't solve homelessness in the Bay Area by throwing money at the problem. The underlying issue is the cost of housing, health care and law enforcement or how those things are applied - all are deep political issues.

My own running list of root problems that underly the homeless epidemic in California:

- zoning. we have technology to build inexpensive micro-apartments, theres just no cost-effective way to gain approval for tens thousands of them convenient to health care facilities and economic opportunities.

- building codes. to build cheap micro-apartments, they need to be prefabricated. building codes enforce customized busy work for individual plumbers, electricians, inspectors and other contractors on each installation. The systems resists pre-fabrication which would be safer and much cheaper overall.

- local attitudes about state power. police use of force. crimes of poverty aren't often prosecuted. City attorneys/prosecutors are highly disincentivized to tackle quality of life crimes. cost of jury trials.

- high cost and poor state of prisons

- lack of police headcount, expense of police salaries/benefits.

- high cost of health care & related labor. regulatory capture by licensed professionals, hospital companies, drug/equipment companies. cost of healthcare liability insurance.

- lack of regional coordination between low-cost and high-cost areas within the state

- lack of state-wide mental health and drug abuse treatment policy

- lack of money for preventative care and early intervention for new homeless - don't tackle problems till its far too late and more costly / impossible to fix