California accounts for nearly a quarter of the entire homeless population in the United States [1], largely due to its climate, its support programs, and its dense network of municipal services and population centers. Approximately 14% of all homeless in the US are military veterans, many of whom suffer from PTSD and were turned out of VA clinics in the 1970s and 1980s due to budget cutbacks. The article is correct in placing a lot of the blame on Reagan, who as governor of CA and president of the US, aggressively scaled back support for both veterans in specific, and the homeless in general. As the article mentions, he also closed a lot of psychiatric hospitals, whose inpatients were turned out onto the streets, left to their own devices. Reagan wasn't the only legislator responsible for this turn of events, but he was probably the most powerful.

Perhaps homelessness is inevitable to some degree. Perhaps some proportion of the population in a laissez-faire, competitive country like the modern US is always going to fall through the cracks. Perhaps we lack the will or the budget to solve the problem completely or permanently. Perhaps some people just can't be saved. I'm not going to launch into an armchair, pollyannaish prescription for solving this problem when I don't have a fantastic solution. (That said, I suspect the best long-term solution is at least as preventive as it is rehabilitative.)

Regardless, there's one thing we can control on an individual level: the way we view and treat the mentally ill and the homeless. Let's not further the stigma, or wax poetic about the homeless in SF as some sort of quirky, fun landmark. I suspect that's not the author's intention -- he's setting out to celebrate the homeless, not to denigrate them -- but some of his language lends itself to misinterpretation. As someone with a close friend who's been homeless, and other friends who've been institutionalized, I don't find the "crazy bums" characterization very constructive.

[1] https://www.onecpd.info/resources/documents/pit-hic_suppleme...