"Much of what is going on in and around San Francisco is driven by the population and commerce there over which the government has limited control."
Why don't cities like Miami and Houston have a homeless problem like San Francisco's?
Why don't cities like Miami and Houston have a homeless problem like San Francisco's?
Now, add Regan's removal of mental health services (something we're still dealing with today), skyrocketing rent (removing the bottom rung of renting), and a sudden population pressure, and you have a uniquely awful set of circumstances.
And no, this does not absolve SF and Bay Area leadership. They have repeatedly thrown money at the problem without any accountability whatsoever, but if the unique factors that affect SF were to hit Miami or Houston, they'd probably find themselves with the same problem overnight.
You know, for many years I also echoed this point but then I realized that it's been almost 50 years since he gutted mental health services. That's plenty of time for the largely democratic leadership in Sacramento to reinstate those services. Why have they not chosen to do so?
The state has been pledging increasing amounts of money into the system, and has been working to draft legislature that allows for extended holds.
Spinning up an entire new hospital system is difficult. It's not something you can do in a year or two, and expect to have positive long term outcomes from.
Implementing longer holds past the 72 hours is difficult to do, unpopular legislation (because of potential for abuse), and fraught with legal challenges. The laws required basically have to say that the state has the right to hold someone against their will, and force medication upon them. That is a very difficult thing to write, implement, and monitor.
Furthermore, implementing these facilities and conservatorships in a humane and ethical way is difficult - Reagan was right to shut down the facilities, but wrong to not instead spend the money and effort to improve and overhaul them.
If the leadership in Miami or Houston decided to behave the same way toward the communities they govern; I'd expect similar results as well.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/headway/houston-homeless-...
Trying to capture more of how the homeless problem would "feel" from the perspective of someone walking around the city, I also calculated the homeless people per square mile of the two cities as Miami: 43.61, and SF: 165.33.
By either metric, SF does measure out worse than Miami by 3-4x
[Current Miami-Dade county homeless counts: 3738](https://web.archive.org/web/20220827094121/https://www.miami...)
[Miami city population: 439,890 at time of posting](https://www.google.com/search?q=miami+city+population&sxsrf=...)
[Proportion of Miami county homeless located in the city proper: 42%](http://ci.miami.fl.us/communitydevelopment/conplan/content/0....)
[SF homeless population: 7754 people](https://sfgov.org/scorecards/safety-net/homeless-population#....)
[SF total population: 815,201](https://www.google.com/search?q=san+francisco+city+populatio...)
[Miami land area: 36.00 sq mi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami)
[SF land area: 46.9 sq mi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco#:~:text=It%20cov....)