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Comment by rezashirazian | Hacker News Reader

Places that get cold usually have less homelessness.

Or they just have a less visible homeless problem because more of the homeless are sleeping in shelters instead of on the streets.

NYC shelters nearly 95% of it's homeless population. SF only manages to shelter about 11% of it's homeless population (about the worst rate in the country). Thus there are more homeless people on SF's streets despite a much smaller total homeless population than NYC (and NYC is of course also a much more populous city).

My recollection: when I took a class on Homelessness and Public Policy through SFSU, the number of homeless in San Francisco was similar to the number in New York in spite of it being a much smaller city.

The most current stats I have indicate that California has about 25 percent of the nation's homeless:

https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/05/california-...?

Yes, exactly. The point is that in a warm climate there may not be more homeless people, just more visible homeless people.

NYC now shelters most of its homeless mainly because state law requires it. We’re spending a ridiculous amount of money putting homeless people up in hotel rooms because the process to get new shelters built is stalled and we can’t even build enough market-rate housing to account for population growth, let alone affordable housing.

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