Understanding homelessness in San Francisco
Why do people become and remain homeless?
It's a truism that "you can't fix what you can't measure," yet many people are quick to offer opinions about homeless people1 without actually understanding how they became homeless or why they remain homeless. This essay will debunk common myths and leave you with a better understanding of the true causes of homelessness. My follow-up essay, A plan to end street homelessness in five years, will use this data to formulate an evidence-based and data-driven solution to homelessness.
You should read the San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing's 2019 Homeless Count, but I will highlight some important figures below. If you're curious how these stats were collected, read this report by KQED.
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How many homeless people live in San Francisco?
In January 2019 there were 8,035 people experiencing homelessness. Most advocates think this is likely an under-count and put the true number closer to 10,000. San Francisco only has about 3,000 shelter beds, leaving at least 5,000 people unsheltered every night.
Most homeless people lived here before they became homeless
70% of the homeless population in San Francisco was living here before they became homeless. That may mean they were staying with friends or family for just a few months, or it may mean they were born and raised here and just couldn't afford the ever-rising rents.
They don't come here for the services or weather
Often you will hear that the homeless come to San Francisco for the services or the weather. Not only is this factually wrong, it isn't even visibly correct! What services? San Francisco has one shelter bed for every 3 homeless people, limited public bathrooms, and rampant crime. You can't assert people come here for the services when the lack of services is so visible.
As for the weather, San Francisco is cold and windy all year — not the kind of weather you'd choose for outdoor living. When it rains, many people die of exposure. Many people lose limbs from a combination of cold weather and infections. There are much better cities for outdoor living.
People are not bussed here
Other cities are not exporting their homeless population to San Francisco. Yes, there have been a couple high-profile scandals where this did happen, but it is not the standing policy of any city. What does happen, however, is homeless people are given the option of accepting a free one-way bus ticket to their home towns or their family's town.
San Francisco does this, too: it's called Homeward Bound. But this program is not available for anyone who is addicted to drugs, has a pet, or cannot prove they have someone on the other side willing to help them.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, "Within a month of leaving San Francisco, 56% of those who used the program from late 2018 to early 2019 said they were stably housed, according to the data. The rest couldn’t be found or were struggling somewhere else." Roughly half of the people who escape homelessness in San Francisco take the bus ticket. The other half find permanent supportive housing. But that only makes up about 25% of the homeless population in the city — the other 75% remain on the street.
Most people became homeless because they just didn't have enough money
63% of people stay homeless because they just don't have enough money to pay their rent. 26% report their primary cause of homelessness is losing their job, and 13% got evicted. 12% had a fight with their family and got kicked out.
Sometimes they can sleep in their car, or sleep at a friend's house, or maybe they even get one of the very few beds available at a homeless shelter. About 40% of San Francisco's homeless are "chronically homeless" — meaning they've been homeless for at least a year.
The other 60% of the homeless are just temporarily homeless. Most of these people you couldn't pick out of a crowd. They're likely to get back on their feet, find friends or family to stay with, or move to a different city. They may have a job, kids, pets, and a support network they can rely on. They might be one of your coworkers, or the cashier at your favorite coffee shop. You never know who might be down on their luck.
Homelessness leads to drug problems, but most start out sober
Most people think that people become homeless because they're addicted to drugs or mentally unstable, but this is not true. In fact, only 18% of people are homeless due to drugs or alcohol, and only 8% due to mental health issues. However, many people develop a drug or alcohol problem once they've become homeless — 42% of homeless people in San Francisco report using drugs or alcohol. But, I have to ask: haven't you had a drink or maybe a bit of pot recently? Hell, I'm drinking a beer as I write this.
Our lack of adequate shelter and healthcare for homeless people leads directly to our drug epidemic. If I had to sleep outside and endure the inhumanity of my situation, I would self-medicate every night. You probably would, too.
Most homeless want housing
I couldn't find official figures for the number of homeless people in SF that actively refuse services, but there's no reason to think we're different from other cities. In Boulder, fully 90% of their homeless population wanted housing.
Nobody wants to sleep outside. Nobody wants to hunt for a bathroom or be unable to bathe. The need for shelter and sanitation are core human needs, and to assume that people are living on the streets because they prefer it is an unsupportable rejection of everything we know about human psychology.
Our biases against the homeless even persist in people who become homeless themselves:
The negative beliefs and stereotypes that many people hold about the unhoused don’t magically disappear when someone becomes homeless themselves, Collins said. “We’ve had people new to homelessness that are like, ‘I can’t sleep in the same room as these people because I’m not one of them.'”
- https://boulderbeat.news/2021/05/01/boulder-homeless-lost-hope/
Getting into shelter and, ultimately, housing require navigating a complex bureaucracy while you are also dealing with the sudden loss of your home. To say that it is stressful and provokes a crisis of identity is an understatement.
Homeless people are just people. They're not alien, they aren't dangerous or violent or mentally unwell. They just don't have enough money or anywhere to stay.
Subscribe now so you don’t miss “A plan to end street homelessness in five years.”
Future essays
Here’s a preview of what I’m working on:
The ADA is the only good thing about American urban planning
How to solve street homelessness in five years
The (high?) cost of social housing
Current Projects
I’m working on some tools to work with the San Francisco voter file, to help campaigns validate their petition signatures, and to analyze election results. Utilities from these projects will be open sourced on GitHub as they reach maturity.
The preferred nomenclature among advocates is "people experiencing homelessness," which I agree is the most humanizing term. But since this essay is for a lay audience, and I believe we should write for our audience, I am using the much more common "homeless people" or "the homeless."