Relative to pretty much all other markets, it's practically impossible to solve homelessness in San Francisco. There are at least two major considerations. The first is the one you pointed out that there are far too many barriers. The second is that San Francisco is a fundamentally hard city to succeed in. Even competent folks with good educations and no real personal problems struggle to do well in San Francisco. If it is hard for such people, it's only going to be far more difficult for people without the same education and with many personal problems.
With these two major constraints in mind, it boggles my mind that we continue to try and solve the problem in San Francisco, instead of directing all the resources to other markets without these constraints.
Providing resources elsewhere and removing support in San Francisco will serve to incentivize the homeless to relocate to places where programs like housing first can be tried and where they have a chance of actually getting on their own two feet because they aren't in a hyper-competitive local market.
Last time someone asked me to donate money to the homeless problem in San Francisco, I told them no, but then proceeded to donate money to a homeless program in another city (at the time I chose a program in Sacremento) because it's beyond stupid to keep putting money into trying to solve the problem in San Francisco if you actually want to see results from the money you spend on the problem.
People working on this problem in San Francisco either have more heart than brains or they are part of the San Francisco homelessness industrial complex and have a vested interest in keeping these programs in San Francisco because they want to live in San Francisco and are employed in this industry.
Social worker salaries in San Francisco are $60k to $100k a year. If you can pay for two to three social workers in other markets instead for the same price, why pay for such people to work in San Francisco.
San Francisco can change! But only if people demand more housing to be built and stop the nonsense linked by previous comment. Its up to the people of SF to fix this.
With these two major constraints in mind, it boggles my mind that we continue to try and solve the problem in San Francisco, instead of directing all the resources to other markets without these constraints.
Providing resources elsewhere and removing support in San Francisco will serve to incentivize the homeless to relocate to places where programs like housing first can be tried and where they have a chance of actually getting on their own two feet because they aren't in a hyper-competitive local market.
Last time someone asked me to donate money to the homeless problem in San Francisco, I told them no, but then proceeded to donate money to a homeless program in another city (at the time I chose a program in Sacremento) because it's beyond stupid to keep putting money into trying to solve the problem in San Francisco if you actually want to see results from the money you spend on the problem.
People working on this problem in San Francisco either have more heart than brains or they are part of the San Francisco homelessness industrial complex and have a vested interest in keeping these programs in San Francisco because they want to live in San Francisco and are employed in this industry.
Social worker salaries in San Francisco are $60k to $100k a year. If you can pay for two to three social workers in other markets instead for the same price, why pay for such people to work in San Francisco.