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Comment by DoreenMichele | Hacker News Reader

I will note that California seems to be America's dumping ground for the nation's homeless problem. There are also long-standing federal and state housing policies impacting San Francisco.

I have no idea how dysfunctional the local city government is in this case, but there are things going on here beyond its control. It's not fair or reasonable to act like the condition the city is in is entirely due to local government stuff.

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San Francisco has also given homeless people one-way bus tickets to get rid of them. It's a common practice in many cities nationwide.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/...

As the article notes, cities usually only will do so if you both want to leave and have someone willing to take you in on the far end.

If they just wanted to get rid of people they wouldn't worry about any of that.

It doesn't quite say that. Key West says they confirm this, and there is an allusion to the policy being similar to some other cities (not all.) In exchange for checking more strictly, the article claims Key West permanently bans at least some homeless from receiving services again. There is also a counter-assertion in the article that some of these policies in other cities are in name only for various reasons (coercion, contact check done carelessly.)

Outside of the scope of the article, there are unofficial deportations that would not have a delineated process and wouldn't be reported.

San francisco is a net exporter of homeless people according to a report about the subject on the guardian.

California is a net exporter of poor people. Yet it still manages to have more than 25 percent of the nation's homeless population while only holding 12 percent of the nation's overall population.

California has a larger percentage of impoverished people when you correct for cost of living than any other state.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...

Link to this report?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/... linked in another comment

I keep hearing this. Do you have any citations for "America's dumping ground". How many homeless are migrating to California?

> As the data shows us, most of the homeless people you pass on the streets every day are in fact Californians.

> Less than a fifth (18 percent) said they had lived out of state before becoming homeless.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/us/homeless-population.ht...

Everytime this argument has been brought up, instead of owning to the responsibility of causing homelessness, Californians love to point out how kind they are to homeless and how they're a "dumping ground" for homelessness. It is a cop out.

I would love to see data as well, but I don't consider self-reported origins to be all that convincing. If I were homeless and moved to a city where it's "easier" to be homeless, I would probably claim that I was previously housed there if asked.

It's crucial to dig into the criteria for what studies consider living in the state at the time of becoming homeless. Plenty of studies consider prison to be "housing" so someone who was homeless before moving to California, then commits a crime and spends a month behind bars, and is homeless after release becomes categorized as living in California when they become homeless.

My problem with these assertions is that there is no data supporting it, but these stories and anecdotes keep circulating. I could make up 100 reasons to hypothesize how homeless could possible end up in California, but without data this is just thinly supported.

More robust question is to ask where they were living 10 years ago. It turns out half of the homeless weren't living in San Francisco ten years ago. Or put differently, they moved to the city within the last ten years.

https://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2019HIRDRep...

Ancestor’s source was about California, yours is San Francisco. Perhaps many of them lived in Oakland, some in Daly City, maybe some were going to the Humboldt State University 10 years ago and are now unhoused because of an overwhelming student dept, and some were agricultural workers in the Valley and weren’t able to gather enough savings to keep them selves housed.

You're linking an article lacking in data.

I'd expect the claimant to provide the data to support their assertion.

You were the one disputing the claim, it's on you to bring the actual data. So no, you can't pass the buck.

That's the opposite of how the burden of proof works.

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