It does so in spite of opening with this:
California saw its homeless population rise by 31 percent even as the number of homeless declined 18 percent in the rest of the United States between 2010 and 2020.
We know that homeless people travel, that some organizations have a policy of solving their local homeless problem by passing out bus tickets and that some states have actively sought to dump their homeless on California.
California has a lot of problems, like terrible housing policies, that contribute to the problem. But I believe California has become the dumping ground for America's homeless and it's problematic to act like California's numbers have gone up because California is behaving badly rather than acknowledge that California's numbers have gone up precisely because homelessness is down elsewhere: California is where some of those people ended up.
And California has unsheltered homeless because the temperate, dry weather in large parts of the state make it tolerable to sleep outside most of the time and it's a better option than the shelter system for a long list of reasons, from the concentration of poverty to exposure to disease to the prison-like conditions.
I think this article is garbage. It contradicts everything I understand about the topic.
I spent nearly six years homeless. I've had a college class on the topic. I still write about it.
I think I'm more informed than average about such things.