Item — HN Reader

I lived in San Francisco from 2011 - 2016 then moved to Pittsburgh, PA for a job opportunity. This past August, I went back to SF for a team building activity and I was blown away by how many fewer homeless people there were on the streets (excluding Tenderloin).

When I lived in SF, there were blocks that I would place money on being a homeless person there, and it seemed like most of them were relocated. Tons of familiar streets in SOMA were at or near zero homeless people. The interesting part is that my co-workers, who never lived in SF, remarked about how many homeless people were still out in the streets. To them, there were tons of homeless people and to me there were hardly any. I was so shocked that I even called one of my friends who is from the Bay Area and asked him what was going on?

2 comments

They seem to just be relocating to other parts of the city as formerly homeless-heavy areas like parts of SOMA and the mission "gentrify." I walk through the loin twice a day on my way to my office on market st near the post-apocalyptic parts of SOMA and see a higher concentration of homeless in those areas than I used to. Perhaps you're revisiting the parts they've left or my un-scientific observations are wrong.

They also seasonally relocate, heading south in the winter and spreading out in the summer. Seattle's transient homeless population is largely gone by mid-December

Well now it barely seems like we are talking about human people.

How would you prefer that sentence be written?

Ahh the Loin...

Just noticed the downvotes my comment got. To clarify: I lived there and loved every minute.

Counterpoint. I've been traveling to SF pretty regularly for a very long time but for whatever reasons hadn't been there for year +. Was at an event at the Moscone in July. Found the homeless situation around the Moscone, Civic Center, etc. to be pretty shockingly bad. I'm not sure how anyone could think it had improved.

Oh yeah, 6th street - 8th street on market is still the same. I actually walked back from the Mission one night and one of my co-workers was like "You walked me through a crack den." Most of the people down there were strung out and not violent, but he was definitely not comfortable.

Gilde[1] is right near the area you're talking about and they provide tons of services for the homeless and mentally ill so there is a high concentration around that area.

[1] - https://www.glide.org

The thing is that in many other cities I've been to, the dodgy homeless areas are confined to areas of the cities that are less on the tourist line, but in SF the homeless problem is right in the centre of the city. My coworker and I were on a trip to SF after visiting a conference in the area (we're from the UK) and we got off at Civic Centre and went straight north, directly through Tenderloin!! to get to our hotel room. Looking at a map this is clearly the best way to go but I was totally bricking it when we got there. Turns out that many people just has an innate knowledge of where to go and not to go when in SF, but it's totally difficult to tell. I mean Market street looks like a main road and has all the big shops on like Adidas etc. Why would I expect the 20 min walk down this main road from Adidas to Twitter HQ to be so dodgy??

Another shock to me was that the homeless are very different between SF and where I'm from (Birmingham UK). Here, they are generally just pitied people down on their luck. They don't really cause harm but can be belligerent when drunk. In SF, many of the homeless people were _terrifying_, clearly having severe untreated mental health issues.

I think that the homeless problem in SF isn't that bad when you are a longer term resident because you get used to it, but it's definitely a big shocker for many tourists.