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My understanding is that the city spends quite a bit of money on the homeless indirectly in various forms. The bigger problem is the growth in the budget:

2012: 7.3 billion for 829,027 people = 8805/resident 2020: 13.7 billion for 896,047 people = 15289/resident

Why did the budget increase 51% in 8 years when the population increased by 8% (1.13% inflation)?

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The economic context has also changed a lot. In 2012 SF's total GDP was 350b, today it's 500b (a 40% increase). It shouldn't necessarily be that surprising that as the economy grows the government's spending does as well.

That’s 51/40 in favor of spending more over those 8 years and in 2012 SF wasn’t frugal. Some increase is justified but not more than 1 to 1.

This does explain quite a bit! Although I'd assume there are economies of scale in running a city (or else they wouldn't exist in general).

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