San Francisco Dreaming

Homeless with social distancing: the city painted white rectangles by Civic Center (Chronicle photo)

San Francisco and California's failure to address the homelessness problem during the pre-coronavirus decade of prosperity is coming home to roost: [bold added]

Before the coronavirus crisis hit earlier this year, nearly 600,000 people were already on America’s streets every night — a quarter of them in California, which has only 12% of the nation’s population overall...

Several nonprofits estimate that the number of “new homeless” in San Francisco is already swelling by as much as a quarter — many believed to have come from out of town. A Columbia University professor has projected that, if unemployment reached above 20%, homelessness could surge nationally by as much as 45% by 2021 — and by 20% in California. His calculation is a worst-case scenario, based on federal estimates of how much homelessness increases with joblessness, and doesn’t take into account stimulus or relief funding...

Every bit as distressing is the escalation of open-air drug use in the city, as dealers emboldened by the disruption of the pandemic step up their street trade. It’s exacerbating what had already been a worsening crisis in recent years in homeless methamphetamine and opioid abuse, hitting a new high this spring with a spike in overdose deaths to nearly triple the previous rate.

Comments:
1) The pandemic has lowered real estate values, and there's a possible opportunity to buy up real estate to provide housing. Such action helped to reduce homelessness from 2008 to 2011 after the Great Recession. The difference this time, however, is that governments have borrowed to the hilt; there's no money to buy and develop real estate without raising taxes significantly, and I don't see any appetite for doing so.

2) One popular image of the new homeless is that they consist of the recently-unemployed poor who are now on the streets. Fine, don't hassle them but do crack down on the open-air drug dealing. That's one of the reasons that the formerly sympathetic citizens of San Francisco have demanded that the City clear up the tents.

3) A significant number of the new homeless have "come from out of town". From the Gold Rush to the building of the railroads and the Liberty ships San Francisco is the great attractor for those who have nothing, maybe just flowers in their hair.