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Comment by burntoutfire | Hacker News Reader

> Something in the handling of the homeless problem had failed in that city.

Or, the homeless are recent migrants from other areas? At least where i live, the homeless all congregate in biggest wealthiest cities, because it's easier to beg, their presence blends in more and also local communities are more atomized so they don't fight off the homeless as hard as in smaller places. I've heard a story of one homeless guy who have recently been sleeping on a bus stop near my home - he's basically travelling from one big city center to another, and stays as long as the police doesn't chase him off the area.

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Not only do they tend to select larger cities, but also warmer cities. You mostly hear about the homeless population in places like San Francisco, Oahu, Austin, etc. If you're homeless, you might as well go to a place where you're less likely to freeze to death. Although there are some homeless in places likes Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, etc.

Not to mention some cities will give them money if they take a bus to another city. Just shuffle the people around so it's no longer that current city's problem.

> Not only do they tend to select larger cities, but also warmer cities.

As a trucker, my view is mostly from the interstate.

The most homeless I see in my travels all over the country is I-5 in California, Oregon and Washington, and CA 99.

It's pretty cold in Washington and Oregon right now. Even California at night.

Tents, tarps, sleeping bags, on both sides of the freeway fence, or inside interchange cloverleafs.

Not judging their condition or their person, I don't know them. It looks pretty rough.

That's certainly cold. I was just saying from a relative position. For example, it's relatively warmer than the midwest.

In other parts of the country you will freeze to death sleeping outside at night, so west coast cold is definitely relative.

You do hear about it more in warmer cities, but the city with the largest homeless population is actually NYC by quite a large margin.

https://www.usnews.com/news/cities/slideshows/cities-with-th...

I wonder if they have an aggregate comparison of warm vs cold cities. I'd still consider NYC on the warmer side (with the gulf stream on the coast) when comparing it to the midwest or even Albany. For example, even going from Pittsburgh to Connecticut can be an increase of 20 degrees due to the gulf stream even though you are going slightly north.

Per capita? NYC is 2x larger than any other city.

LA/Los Angeles county (what the prior link uses) is a little larger than NYC, 10 million vs 8 million respectively.

I would also be interested in per capita per city. Even more so for aggregates of cold vs warm cities overall.

There is no comparison. LA county is the majority of the LA metro, while NYC is the minority.

The most meaningful comparison is CSA:

NY is 22.5M

LA is 18.7M

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_statistical_area

I think many people prefer the MSA definition over the CSA, CSA feels like a bit of a stretch in many of its definitions. Are San Jose and San Francisco one entity, or two? CSA says one, MSA says two.

Consider that someone who lives between them could have a 30 min. commute to a job in both. There's definitely a case to be made for some cases to use the concept that encompasses that.

Having lived and worked in the Bay Area I would definitely say they are one entity socially and economically. It was not unusual to have people live in San Jose and commute to SF, nor vice versa.

By contrast, Sacramento was clearly not part of that unit, even though it isn’t _that_ much further away. There’s a notable gap between the cities, and the cross-commute rate was near zero. (Emphatically NOT zero, there were some people who commuted in from Sacramento, but those were rare, and I never heard of anyone commuting the other way).

[...] but also warmer cities [...] like San Francisco [...]

Err...?

Seems fair to me in comparison to Pittsburgh and Philadelphia

Is there any data that homeless people "select" expensive cities?

There's a lot of evidence that expensive cities create homeless people [1, 2, 3].

[1] https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/12/14/18131047/homelessne...

[2] https://archive.curbed.com/2016/8/26/12652130/homelessness-e...

[3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-07-06/why-is-ho...

Anecdata from long-term-homeless youth in particular suggest they're moderately mobile, and that they maintain three criteria: Liveable climate, how abusive the city is or isn't towards homeless people, and the presence of upper middle class residents & tourists to panhandle

People, particularly families, who are briefly homeless until they get the next apartment or who are on the short-list for assistance, are less mobile. There are a lot of homeless people who have a job, have a car, but just can't make it work at the moment as far as housing.

Austin is becoming what LA used to be (and in the winter, still is) for the Midwest: the place for cities to send their homeless to so they don't have to spend money on them.

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