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How does California have 50% of the homeless and 12% of the population? It doesn't. It has 25 percent of the nation’s homeless. It has 50 percent of the unshel
by DoreenMichele 3y ago
How does California have 50% of the homeless and 12% of the population?
It doesn't. It has 25 percent of the nation’s homeless. It has 50 percent of the unsheltered homeless -- i.e. people camped outside.
It has so many unsheltered homeless in part because parts of the state are temperate and dry. Much of the time, it's not a hardship to sleep outside in some parts of California.
- giantg2 3y agoSimilar to what I've seen in HI. I imagine there would be more in HI if it didn't cost an expensive plane ticket.
- hackernewds 3y agoThere are. And they're vastly undercounted. Au contraire, the HI govt often deports the homeless off the island
- thebigwinning 3y agoSF and further north are hardly nice weather locations.
- bobthepanda 3y agoSF isn’t a tropical paradise, but temperature extremes that cause death aren’t very common.
- ricardobayes 3y agoDefinitely, the winter I visited Mountain View it was 2C (35F) and ground frost.
- recursive 3y agoI think above freezing in winter might generally be considered nice weather.
- Izikiel43 3y agoDefine nice weather. If we are talking winters with temperatures consistently over 0C (32F), little to no snow, seattle and portland are great for winter. Nice weather for homeless people basically means not strong shelter required to survive, unlike the midwest and east coast which consistently freeze in winter.
- georgeecollins 3y agoBut relative to a lot of the US-- Chicago, New York.. it is very survivable.
- aidenn0 3y agoI found this chart[1] and I do wonder how Oregon and Washington have such a high unsheltered population; I'm not familiar with the PNW, are parts of the states mild? The rest of that chart is pretty much in line with how I perceive winters to be. 1: https://www.thecentersquare.com/florida/article_67aeebc1-e7be-5f72-8e51-48706a7c0728.html https://www.thecentersquare.com/florida/article_67aeebc1-e7b...
- loeg 3y agoThe coast is relatively mild compared to inline Oregon or Washington, but winters are still wet and cold (especially in Washington).
- loeg 3y ago> inline "inland," sorry.
- DoreenMichele 3y agoI'm not first-hand familiar with Oregon, but some parts of Washington have moderate temps. Coastal Washington gets a lot of rain but rarely freezes and -- anecdotally -- at least one city in Coastal Washington has vastly worse rates of homelessness on a per capita basis than some of the cities infamous for it, like Seattle and SF. And, yes, they are mostly camped outside, not in shelters.
- meowtimemania 3y agoWhich city? I was in Spokane recently (obviously not the coastal city you are speaking about) and was surprised by how full of homeless people downtown was.
- zoklet-enjoyer 3y agoOlympia?
- tiedieconderoga 3y agoThe PNW has interesting geography: the Cascades run North/South right near the Western shore, and they catch most of the rain that the Pacific hurls at the area. West of the mountains, it's temperate and damp. The Olympic peninsula is technically a rainforest, but the populous areas tend to get a lot of drizzle rather than heavy rain. Snow is rare at low elevations, even in winter. East of the mountains, it's temperate and arid. Lots of power generation and agriculture on former tribal lands. In the mountains, large national forests which allow dispersed camping. It's not always "mild", but wherever you end up, it's usually not inhospitable. The summers have gotten much worse lately though, Seattle was a city where nobody felt the need for air conditioners as recently as 10-20 years ago. Now they sell out in the first heat wave of the summers, and new apartment buildings are starting to include them.
- KennyBlanken 3y agoAdd to that California's very high cost of living and tight/expensive housing market which making it very easy to fall from employment and housing to homelessness, coupled with the country-wide massive drop in home ownership, skyrocketing housing costs, near total stagnation of wages for lower classes, and unprecedented concentration of wealth. I don't know why anyone is shocked that the US homeless population is skyrocketing. The powers that be seem hellbent on solidifying a peasant class. Right now the housing market is being snapped up at lightning pace by corporations; it may not be long before it's nearly impossible to own a house outright that your family doesn't already own, but even keeping a house within a family might soon be very difficult as well....with the only option being to rent from a giant housing corporation. And everyone thinks HOAs are bad...just wait.
- JohnFen 3y agoI don't personally mind the idea of not being able to buy a house. That's not a thing I'm interested in anyway. But only being able to rent from large corporations? That's nightmare fuel right there.
- throwaway049 3y agoThe two things are fairly tightly connected. If ordinary citizens can't buy house, how does some other citizen (not corporation) buy one and offer it for rent to you?
- JohnFen 3y agoYes, absolutely true. I wasn't really saying that not being able to buy a house is a good thing, but I did speak before thinking here.
- dragonwriter 3y agoThere are things besides individual citizens and corporations that could, in theory, own and rent housing.
- ajmurmann 3y ago