1. The silent majority of homeless people that are suffering and with the proper services could get back on their feet, but they are not actually having a day to day impact on the general population. Cutting helpful services for these people is terrible, and the longer someone goes homeless the more issue they may have getting out later. Housing prices also have more impact in creating this type of homelessness.
2. The loud minority of homeless people, often in need of serious mental help that they very well may refuse, who have a negative impact on the community - disruption in the libraries, needles on the street, etc. There are places where the prevailing sentiment is refusing to remove these people when they are disturbing important community spaces or to arrest them for crimes like openly using hard drugs and peeing in the public fountain. This sort of tolerance shouldn't be conflated with robust access to resources, but unfortunately it does seem to be by policy makers.
So yeah, many homeless people go to cities where they will have access to services, and that is more relevant to statistics. Some homeless people go to cities where they know they will more easily be able to obtain and use drugs, steal, etc. Those people are a tiny fraction of the total population, but it doesn't take many of them to start to have a noticeable impact on a local area. This is where we see the more visceral negative reaction to homelessness in west coast cities coming from.
Though I'm sure there are people from other areas of the country amplifying this problem for their own political agenda rather than care for the community or the homeless, it's definitely a real feeling amongst residents in certain areas of SF too, and it doesn't come out of nowhere.
1. The silent majority of homeless people that are suffering and with the proper services could get back on their feet, but they are not actually having a day to day impact on the general population. Cutting helpful services for these people is terrible, and the longer someone goes homeless the more issue they may have getting out later. Housing prices also have more impact in creating this type of homelessness.
2. The loud minority of homeless people, often in need of serious mental help that they very well may refuse, who have a negative impact on the community - disruption in the libraries, needles on the street, etc. There are places where the prevailing sentiment is refusing to remove these people when they are disturbing important community spaces or to arrest them for crimes like openly using hard drugs and peeing in the public fountain. This sort of tolerance shouldn't be conflated with robust access to resources, but unfortunately it does seem to be by policy makers.
So yeah, many homeless people go to cities where they will have access to services, and that is more relevant to statistics. Some homeless people go to cities where they know they will more easily be able to obtain and use drugs, steal, etc. Those people are a tiny fraction of the total population, but it doesn't take many of them to start to have a noticeable impact on a local area. This is where we see the more visceral negative reaction to homelessness in west coast cities coming from.
Though I'm sure there are people from other areas of the country amplifying this problem for their own political agenda rather than care for the community or the homeless, it's definitely a real feeling amongst residents in certain areas of SF too, and it doesn't come out of nowhere.