[jordonwii]

Do you have source for calling it an "influx"? According to the city's annual survey (from 2017)[1], 70% of the current homeless population lived in SF county before becoming homeless, 21% lived in another CA county (which may include, say, Berkeley or Oakland), and only 10% came from outside CA. I'd hardly call 10% of the current homeless population an influx.

[1] http://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2017-SF-Poin...

[throwawaysea]

Isn’t this based on self-answered surveys and not hard verifiable information to establish residency? The homeless and activists/nonprofits advocating on their behalf have an incentive to make it look like they’re mostly local.

[nerfhammer]

Is there any systematic evidence of the oft-repeated idea that homeless are being bussed in from every corner of the country? Besides an anecdotal case or two? If not, why should we believe that it happens with any degree of frequency?

Do you believe that estimates of the total counts of homeless people might be more or less accurate, since there's no supposed incentive for activists to discount it? SF's homelessness per capita is actually not particularly high compared to other major cities, which is not at all what you would expect if homeless were swarming en masse to SF from those other places: https://medium.com/hatchbeat/homelessness-a-tale-of-three-ci... . What's really high in SF and other West Coast cities is the percent of unsheltered homeless. It may be that it only seems like there are more of them because they are more visible because besides SF's dislike of building housing they also don't build sufficient homeless shelters: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Bay-Area-homeless-uns...

[jordonwii]

> Isn’t this based on self-answered surveys and not hard verifiable information to establish residency?

True, though collecting hard verifiable proof of prior residency from homeless folks seems beyond what can be expected from a one-day citywide survey. :)

If you know of a survey that did collect that information, I'd certainly be interested in the results.

> The homeless and activists/nonprofits advocating on their behalf have an incentive to make it look like they’re mostly local.

I suppose a high out-of-county population might make locals stingier, but getting caught providing bad data also seems like a pretty bad outcome for any of the local non-profits that helped conduct the survey.

[ultrasaurus]

No political angle, but to expand on the data from that report (pages 22-23):

* Sixty-nine percent (69%) ... were living in San Francisco at the time they most recently became homeless... 8% had lived in San Francisco for less than one year.

* Of their previous living arrangements: 32% with friends or family, 11% in subsidized housing, 8% in a hotel, 6% incarcerated, 3% in hospital, 3% in foster care.

So it's probably more accurate to think of at most 50% of the population as having come from stable housing situations in SF.