SF strikes me as the city with the highest highs and the lowest lows.
And, for what it's worth, many pricier essentials are either locked or behind sliding panes in NYC stores. The Duane Reade near me has panes that chime when you push them aside, alerting anyone nearby and also preventing you from swiping an entire row of items into a bag or cart.
[1]: https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/homelessness/2020/06/25...
I'd like to think that NYC is at least slightly better, numbers wise, but it probably isn't.
If NYC, if you don't have enough shelter space, there will be large numbers of people dying in the streets in the winter, so the city's hand is forced, and they have to build enough shelters or rent hotels, etc. That's not the case in California.
And likewise, if you prefer to sleep outside instead of in a shelter, that's an option year-round in California. But not in NYC, at least for a few months a year. So your hand is forced and you have to get used to sleeping in a shelter.
I don't know whether you intend it as such, but I hear Californians regularly bring up their mild weather as a defense of their state's failure to develop an adequate support system for the homeless.
Focusing on (most of) California's lack of four seasons ignores the brute facts of street living, namely: you're still exposed to the elements and weather (you don't need to be in a cold climate to get hypothermia), to street pollution, and to irregular sleep and disturbance by members of the public and police.
In a humane system any of the above is a sufficient "forcing function," which is why NYC doesn't close homeless shelters once it's "nice enough" to survive outside. California shouldn't need a bodycount to justify housing its homeless.
What percentage of housing should California allocate to homeless people? What conditions should have to be met before the state houses someone?
If I want to temporarily move to LA tomorrow, why don't I just say I'm homeless(which would be true) and force the state to house me somewhere for the duration of my visit?
What percentage of the population should California force onto the streets? Framing the question around a "percentage of housing" minimizes the humanitarian aspect of the problem, at the absolute minimum.
Questions about sufficient conditions are policy ones, and they seem irrelevant (again, at best) to the material fact that SF already has thousands of people sleeping in the open. Focusing on them seems prudent.
> If I want to temporarily move to LA tomorrow, why don't I just say I'm homeless(which would be true) and force the state to house me somewhere for the duration of my visit?
I don't know if you've ever been to a homeless shelter. I have, and you really don't want to live in one unless you absolutely have to. The idea that individuals with means would willingly prefer and tax the resources of the shelter system is farcical.
SF strikes me as nice but not kind city. If you're destitute they'll give you a dollar. But building affordable housing is too far a step.
Building any housing that's not a McMansion in SF is literally almost impossible. NIMBY politics run deep in California.
That’s how I interpret the laws. They are dysfunctional for a reason. Because no rational government could run this way.
where it gets colder
and they are hunted by their own
kind, these men often crawl under car radiators,
drink the anti-freeze,
get warm and grateful for some minutes, then die.
but that is an older culture and a wiser one
- Bukowski, 1973
* Manhattan alone has twice as many people as San Francisco, in less than half the space. It also isn't districted as cleanly as SF is -- even the office and business areas of Manhattan are heavily residential. Put another way: everybody lives somewhere in Manhattan, so it makes sense to scatter shelters and other managed housing throughout the island.
* If we're talking specifically about shelters, Manhattan's are not particularly scatted: the majority are in midtown (right next to Times Square!), and a sizable minority are on the LES/in Chinatown. It's hard to find an official reference for this (since so many of NYC's shelters are nonprofits), but here's a user-created map with some datapoints[1].
* As mentioned in the original comment, NYC aggressively attempts to house its homeless population, including with indefinite hotel rentals. Hotels are dispersed through the city, so it's no particular surprise that their use as homeless housing results in the homeless being somewhat less concentrated in particular neighborhoods. You have an independent (and correct!) point about poverty in the city, but I don't think your observation makes sense for homelessness itself.
[1]: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&ll=...
And, to be clear, the homeless are more visible in that area! But I wouldn't say disproportionately so, given the population and density of Manhattan itself. I consider that a testament to NYC's (relative) success at providing homeless services.