4 ms·

There are 35k homeless people in the Bay Area [1] 7-15k of them in SF. There are ~7M people living here. While those numbers sound at first high. It's not such

There are 35k homeless people in the Bay Area [1] 7-15k of them in SF. There are ~7M people living here. While those numbers sound at first high. It's not such a crazy high amount of people. (from what i know cities like Vienna or London also have at least a forth of that number (couldnt find stats)) The "homelessness situation" is next to cost of living the #1 thing i hear from people who don't want to relocate here. And tbh it's also the reason why i dont plan to stay in SF for longer term. I know there is no easy answer to the problem of homelessness in the bay area - but it doesnt sound unsolvable. [1]: http://www.myphilanthropedia.org/top-nonprofits/bay-area/homelessness/2009 http://www.myphilanthropedia.org/top-nonprofits/bay-area/hom...

beatpanda 11y ago
The "homeless situation" is roughly the same in San Francisco as in every major city, where a near-constant 1% of the population are homeless. There a variety of reasons why homeless people are more visible in San Francisco than in other places, but there aren't more of them.
- lstamour 11y ago
  Ran a few random figures: It's actually 0.2% in Toronto (where I am), or ~5200 of 2.6 million. In NYC it's 59,568 or 0.7% of 8.4 million. In SF, it's 7539 compared to a population of 837442. That's 0.9%, or 4x higher than Toronto's, per capita, but only 28% higher than in NYC per capita. Perhaps because of the weather, Canada's homelessness per capita is quite low: http://homelesshub.ca/resource/which-city-canada-has-most-homeless-people-capita-and-why http://homelesshub.ca/resource/which-city-canada-has-most-ho... It's harder to find a similar analysis by city for the U.S., perhaps because there are so many more cities to consider. I'm also not sure I would count "employed homeless" or perhaps "homeless by choice" the same way as I would those struggling to find work or have other issues.
- mwfunk 11y ago
  If the 35k figure is correct for SF, that means it's over 4% of the population.
  - andreasklinger 11y ago
    35k whole bay area

beatpanda 11y ago

The "homeless situation" is roughly the same in San Francisco as in every major city, where a near-constant 1% of the population are homeless. There a variety of reasons why homeless people are more visible in San Francisco than in other places, but there aren't more of them.

lstamour 11y ago
Ran a few random figures: It's actually 0.2% in Toronto (where I am), or ~5200 of 2.6 million. In NYC it's 59,568 or 0.7% of 8.4 million. In SF, it's 7539 compared to a population of 837442. That's 0.9%, or 4x higher than Toronto's, per capita, but only 28% higher than in NYC per capita. Perhaps because of the weather, Canada's homelessness per capita is quite low: http://homelesshub.ca/resource/which-city-canada-has-most-homeless-people-capita-and-why http://homelesshub.ca/resource/which-city-canada-has-most-ho... It's harder to find a similar analysis by city for the U.S., perhaps because there are so many more cities to consider. I'm also not sure I would count "employed homeless" or perhaps "homeless by choice" the same way as I would those struggling to find work or have other issues.
mwfunk 11y ago
If the 35k figure is correct for SF, that means it's over 4% of the population.
- andreasklinger 11y ago
  35k whole bay area