> Maybe not officially, but the people certainly have given me the impression that they do. I don't know that they've written them off so much as they feel hel

> Maybe not officially, but the people certainly have given me the impression that they do. I don't know that they've written them off so much as they feel helpless to tackle the problem in any meaningful way, and are frustrated about it. If someone had a better plan than "throw another $200m at it and see if it gets better", I think people would be on board. I don't live there anymore, so I don't really follow it, but what I recall is mostly trying to dump more funding into the same programs as if it would hit some critical mass and make a difference. > I highly doubt most (let alone all) of that money is actually going toward the homeless people themselves, though (even indirectly, e.g. for healthcare). I'd best most of it, rather, goes toward bureaucratic overhead. That's the budget for the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, it's not a slush fund. As far as I'm aware, they're not paying ER bills or anything like that. Those externalities are in addition to this funding. As I said to the other commenter, if you've got evidence of poor fund usage, I'm open to that idea, it wouldn't shock me. As far as I could validate, they're spending the money well. I checked ~$100m in funding that went to partnered non-profits (there was ~$250m in the list). The worst non-profit I saw spent 78.5% on it's funding on programs. The other two did better at 92.8% and 98.1%. > And the median rent for even a studio (let alone anything better) is $27,000/year - i.e. $8,817 more than what's generally deemed affordable via the "one third of income" rule. Factor in all the other things more expensive in SF, it's no wonder why homelessness is so rampant when wages don't keep up with the cost of living. I genuinely don't think the city can fix that. There's more people that want to live in SF than there is housing. Lower the prices and people will move to SF (hell, I'd think about moving back). Raise the median wage and prices will rise; the tech people will still make more than the median wage. The only thing I can see working is dramatic redistribution of wealth, which will probably crater the city finances as everyone with money leaves. It's a small, highly desirable, highly productive, geographically constrained city. Capitalism practically dictates that the poor won't be able to afford to live there. That's a false dichotomy, though. The third option is to move somewhere they can afford to live. It sucks, but it's happening all over the country.