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"San Francisco currently spends around $430 per city resident per year on services and programs for the homeless, compared to $260 in New York and $110 in Los A

"San Francisco currently spends around $430 per city resident per year on services and programs for the homeless, compared to $260 in New York and $110 in Los Angeles" Anyone know why this discrepancy exists? I know this includes rental assistance for those "at risk" of becoming homeless (but not necessarily homeless), so the value, when calculated "per homeless" resident, is meaningless. However, this calculation "per city resident" in general seems to point at some deep infrastructural issues. I'm trying to find an analysis as to why and coming up empty.

kps 8y ago
San Francisco has a tiny population (because California likes to start a new ‘city’ every two blocks) and nice weather.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
HuShifang 8y ago
Prima facie this strikes me as an apples-to-oranges comparison. New York and Los Angeles are large cities with millions of residents and dominate their geographical areas (LA perhaps less than New York, but still). San Francisco has something like 884,000 residents, which makes it the second largest city in the Bay Area (after San Jose, with 1,035,000 or so), which has something like 8.7 million residents if you go by Combined Statistical Area (CSA) definition, which makes intuitive sense to me having lived here. By comparison New York has 8.6 million out of 24 million for its CSA; LA has 4 million out of 18.7 million for its CSA. So really, a more meaningful comparison (if one is resigned to handwaving about tax bases, without delving into details of city finances) for SF would be Boston, with 865,000 people out of 8.2 million for its CSA.
- pj_mukh 8y ago
  AFAIK, homeless problem scales with population size. So if you divide by population size (which those values do), the value should stay roughly the same. What are the factors that make this untrue?
  - aeternus 8y ago
    Cost of housing is a big one. Low housing costs and plenty of space available make the homeless problem both less likely and easier to deal with.
    - mturmon 8y ago
      Yep, there are plenty of outlying areas in LA that are still not expensive in the same way SF is - LA is just much, much bigger. So you can hang on with significantly less money. Still, it's an interesting question.
  - cpr 8y ago
    Much of it has to be geographical--SF has mostly bearable weather year-round, Boston doesn't.
aeternus 8y ago
This does seem excessive, but I'd like to see a more detailed breakdown of spending. SF vs. Manhattan is a better comparison as New York city as a whole has more/cheaper space available than SF.
abalone 8y ago
Because it's a disingenuous compare. Stripe is leading you to believe that spending per city resident is a fair measure of the effectiveness of how we spend money. But it's actually spending per homeless city resident that's the correct measure of that! SF has a much higher rate of homelessness than the national average, so that explodes the per-resident cost. But we actually spend less per homeless resident than NYC. Surprised? Stripe knows all this. They have this veneer of plain spoken honesty, but take note of the trick they're trying to pull here.

kps 8y ago

San Francisco has a tiny population (because California likes to start a new ‘city’ every two blocks) and nice weather.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

HuShifang 8y ago

Prima facie this strikes me as an apples-to-oranges comparison. New York and Los Angeles are large cities with millions of residents and dominate their geographical areas (LA perhaps less than New York, but still). San Francisco has something like 884,000 residents, which makes it the second largest city in the Bay Area (after San Jose, with 1,035,000 or so), which has something like 8.7 million residents if you go by Combined Statistical Area (CSA) definition, which makes intuitive sense to me having lived here. By comparison New York has 8.6 million out of 24 million for its CSA; LA has 4 million out of 18.7 million for its CSA. So really, a more meaningful comparison (if one is resigned to handwaving about tax bases, without delving into details of city finances) for SF would be Boston, with 865,000 people out of 8.2 million for its CSA.

pj_mukh 8y ago
AFAIK, homeless problem scales with population size. So if you divide by population size (which those values do), the value should stay roughly the same. What are the factors that make this untrue?
- aeternus 8y ago
  Cost of housing is a big one. Low housing costs and plenty of space available make the homeless problem both less likely and easier to deal with.
  - mturmon 8y ago
    Yep, there are plenty of outlying areas in LA that are still not expensive in the same way SF is - LA is just much, much bigger. So you can hang on with significantly less money. Still, it's an interesting question.
- cpr 8y ago
  Much of it has to be geographical--SF has mostly bearable weather year-round, Boston doesn't.

aeternus 8y ago

This does seem excessive, but I'd like to see a more detailed breakdown of spending. SF vs. Manhattan is a better comparison as New York city as a whole has more/cheaper space available than SF.

abalone 8y ago

Because it's a disingenuous compare. Stripe is leading you to believe that spending per city resident is a fair measure of the effectiveness of how we spend money. But it's actually spending per homeless city resident that's the correct measure of that! SF has a much higher rate of homelessness than the national average, so that explodes the per-resident cost. But we actually spend less per homeless resident than NYC. Surprised? Stripe knows all this. They have this veneer of plain spoken honesty, but take note of the trick they're trying to pull here.