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Homelessness is not just about pan handlers on the street and other visible forms of homelessness. A lot of the time you can't tell someone is homeless, or is e

Homelessness is not just about pan handlers on the street and other visible forms of homelessness. A lot of the time you can't tell someone is homeless, or is experiencing intermittent homelessness. A quick google seems to point to about 4000 people in Chattanooga experiencing homelessness per year. SF has concrete stats that are easy to find [1] and points to 7,539 experiencing homelessness per year. Based on total populations (173,366 people in Chattanooga, 837,442 in SF), the percentage is actually a lot higher in Chattanooga than in SF. Liking a small city is totally fine of course, but it's not correct to assume SF is completely overrun by homelessness whereas Chattanooga doesn't have any. [1] Warning, PDF: https://sfgov.org/lhcb/sites/default/files/2015%20San%20Francisco%20Homeless%20Count%20%20Report_0.pdf https://sfgov.org/lhcb/sites/default/files/2015%20San%20Fran...

krschultz 10y ago
You are comparing apples to oranges. The SF number is a "point in time count", so on that particular day there were 7500 homeless people. The Chattanooga # you are referencing is "how many people were homeless at any point in the year". Given how many people are temporarily homeless, I'm sure any point in time survey of Chattanooga would show a dramatically smaller number. I don't know if it's better or worse than SF, but comparing those two numbers is basically meaningless.
- mtalantikite 10y ago
  Yeah, you're right, a longer Google makes that obvious. I couldn't find a good source for PIT for Chattanooga, but it looks to be somewhere around 700 based on a few news articles. So it's about .4% vs .9%. I think the conclusion still stands though, it's not correct to state Chattanooga has no problem with homelessness and SF is overrun. Homelessness isn't just people asking you for money on the street.

krschultz 10y ago

You are comparing apples to oranges. The SF number is a "point in time count", so on that particular day there were 7500 homeless people. The Chattanooga # you are referencing is "how many people were homeless at any point in the year". Given how many people are temporarily homeless, I'm sure any point in time survey of Chattanooga would show a dramatically smaller number. I don't know if it's better or worse than SF, but comparing those two numbers is basically meaningless.

mtalantikite 10y ago
Yeah, you're right, a longer Google makes that obvious. I couldn't find a good source for PIT for Chattanooga, but it looks to be somewhere around 700 based on a few news articles. So it's about .4% vs .9%. I think the conclusion still stands though, it's not correct to state Chattanooga has no problem with homelessness and SF is overrun. Homelessness isn't just people asking you for money on the street.