When people say “homeless are everywhere” regarding SF, they’re probably referring to the extremely troubled people who are conspicuously doing drugs or screaming incoherently on the streets. I don’t think those people would suddenly be fine if only the SF apartments were $500 a month instead of $3000.

Of course, there are a lot more homeless people in SF than the very conspicuously unwell people I mentioned. There are also probably larger scale effects that together contribute to high rents, high income inequality, drug abuse, lack of medical care, etc. But there’s a lot more to say than that SF’s homeless problem is because rent is too high.

I'm curious about the ratio of those unwell folks who are native to the area compared to those who are transplants.

I can certainly imagine a 'homeless pipeline' where the children of the parents who get priced out of housing end up doing drugs on the street, but I also know about bussing the homeless and homeless moving to SF because they don't want to deal with a serious winter.

According to Wikipedia: As of 2014, the city is believed to have approximately 7,000 homeless residents. As of 2015, approximately 71% of the city's homeless had housing in the city before becoming homeless, while the remaining 29% came from outside of San Francisco

Homelessness is a very complicated issue, but it would absolutely be better for all people currently without homes if rent was that cheap. Many people who currently are living on the street or in shelters would be able to find stable housing. This would free up resources and care which could focus on those people who need it most.

I'm not from US and I'm not very informed about the homeless problem.

But I wonder why homeless people don't move to another city. If I'd be in their situation (living in a city where I can not afford to rent a house and live a normal life) I'd go to another city where with a regular job I can afford a normal life and just build my life there.

Sorry if it's a stupid question.

They get free services in San Francisco that they wouldn't in other cities. Also, many of the folks on the street during the day are actually housed, in public housing, and leave to do drugs since they will loose their housing if they do drugs at home.

Oh, they do move to another city. They move from homelessness in their original town, to homelessness in San Francisco, often with transportation paid for by their origin city/state's government, because SF has extremely lax drug and vagrancy enforcement, a mild climate, and easy access.

As mentioned elsewhere, this is simply not true, and you can do some very quick research to learn that it's not true. The vast majority of homeless people in SF are from SF. Stop being part of the misinformation problem.

People who tend to think like you, who can plan in advance, are willing to get a regular job, don't do drugs etc, rarely end up homeless, even in the US. Most of the visible homeless on the streets of large US cities are deeply dysfunctional people, and lower rents or public housing won't make them more functional. Getting them out of public sight would be improvement for the public, to be sure, but the policies of the US cities ran by liberals tend to be extremely ineffective with respect to getting them out of public sight.

> But I wonder why homeless people don't move to another city.

Because there are few cities in the country that are as accommodating to the homeless as SF. And I'm not talking about weather, I'm talking about services, aid, lack of police harassment, etc.

If you're homeless it's certainly the best place in the country to live.