That is in no way unique to SF (though I had to go private browsing to see because Paulg blocked me), not even CA specific.

This is more of paulg's libertarian anti-government nonsense, wherein he ignores the fact that the economic policies he favors lead fairly directly to the poverty that results in these scenes. The "uniquely broken" part of this is that the extreme poor live next to the extreme rich. In other places, the poor are aggressively policed away, and that's what paulg would considered "fixed". In other countries with functional social welfare systems you also get less of this - but paulg is vehemently opposed to the concept of "people not starving and freezing to death".