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Comment by triceratops | Hacker News Reader

Why do you think so? What makes SF have so many more drug addicted or mentally ill people, compared to cities with sane housing prices?

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Because everyone knows that SF will tolerate behavior that other cities will not, and that attracts the most problematic homeless people from all over the country. It's practically a network effect for homeless encampments.

> attracts the most problematic homeless people from all over the country

Here's a study someone else posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33010913

"The data shows that over 70% of all of SF's unhoused people became homeless while living in San Francisco"

So about 1/3 of them came from somewhere else! That's not normal. That's actually evidence of a strong attraction drawing people from other places.

And half of the 70% are "recent transplants."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33011351

Good weather, good services, no law enforcement harassment.

You're saying mentally ill, drug addicted people are capable of making rational decisions such as this. But in another thread, you also claimed that regular people who "would be successful and housed" in cheaper places don't make the seemingly rational decision to move away. How?

Something about SF is a draw for homeless people.

According to a 2019 survey [0], only 70% of people were living in SF prior to being homeless, and of those 70%, approximately half had lived in SF for less than ten years.

To me, that's staggering if 30% of the homeless population was already homeless before they moved to SF, and if another 30% became homeless within 10 years of moving to SF.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_San_Franci...

Rationality is not required. Someone sleeping rough in a place like my hometown is going to be moved along if they're in a highly visible area, driven to a shelter if it's dangerously cold, or killed by the elements if they don't get to shelter. Someone in San Francisco can sleep in the same spot right in the middle of everything, undisturbed, for years. Of course you're going to see more homeless people here.

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