This is a common observation and should make more people ponder: why is it that higher local wealth/economic productivity increases homelessness (especially if you control for public services to counteract the effect)?
May I suggest the book Progress and Poverty by Henry George https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/55308 that asks almost the same question. The answer is that private land ownership allows landowners to capture economic growth of prosperous places, so wages barely cover rent at the margin. This is particularly relevant to California which passed a disastrous constitutional amendment Proposition 13 (1978) which slashed property taxes from around 2% to 1% and declining, especially for older estates, which is pretty much the opposite of the ideal policy to deal with the problem of rising rents.
But ALSO - these areas tend to lean towards higher levels of social services such that they have much higher homeless shelter / services / etc per capita.
So while many people may go homeless in place, certainly there is some homeless migration towards areas that actually provide food/shelter and don't harass/arrest them/chase them away.
People move there for the jobs, and the ones who do have jobs tend to have relatively well paying ones, so can pay more for housing. But the ones who don't have a well paying job are in trouble...
https://worksinprogress.co/issue/why-housing-shortages-cause...
Basically at what point do you decide you're "failing" (no moral valence intended) in one area in which you have a support network that you're willing to risk moving to a totally new area and starting over? At that point, do you have the resources required to do so successfully?
And how good is that support network if it leaves you camping in a tent down by the river? I'm not taking about moving across the state, just down the road a bit.
Someone who doesn't have a job can't afford "substantially cheaper" housing anyway.
That's great! But if you have no place to store your clean (or dirty) clothes, or to shower, how many landlords are going to rent to you? How many employers are going to offer you a job?
Those are not rhetorical questions.
Nope. Definitely not talking about homeless poeple. Gotcha.
2. Remote areas don't have services that cater to homeless people.
The cost of living here is about 1/2 of the USA, with rents about 1/4. The unemployment rate is about 5%.
Homelessness is very, very low (to the point of near invisibility) and mostly limited to illegal immigrants.
The thing that seems to make homelessness a non-issue here is the tolerance of ad-hoc construction. This leads to neighbourhoods where construction is really low cost / quality, but people are housed.
I don’t really understand why these neighbourhoods don’t devolve into hotbeds of violent crime as I would expect them to in the USA, but they mostly don’t.
Mostly, the construction tends to improve over time, and the neighbourhoods often gradually metamorphosize into more contemporary and inviting areas with vibrant small businesses and elegant homes.
I often wonder if it’s cultural, as poverty is not seen as failure but rather a temporary condition to be transcended as possible?
>no homeless
bro if everyone is homeless than nobody is