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by TMWNN·5y ago·view on hn ↗
>You've missed the fundamental flaw in the logic - as you spend lavishly to 'house' (actually pay to put in a flophouse) one person another shows up, having heard through the grapevine the pickings are excellent in San Francisco.

Correct. Why is the homeless problem in San Francisco so much worse than in San Diego, despite the latter having nicer climate? Because the goodies are in San Francisco and people know it.

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San Diego has more homeless people than SF.

https://www.kpbs.org/news/2018/dec/17/san-diego-has-fourth-h...

It's less visible because SD is way larger geographically than SF (231 square miles vs. 372 sq miles in the city proper), plus there's no bay to the East, it just goes into more urban area. But, yeah, there's a big skid-row tent-city southeast of the Padres stadium.

SF is a small city and it just squeeeeezes everyone together so it's in your face.

San Diego County (not city) also has more than three times the population of San Francisco, so all the more dilution of the homeless. But there's no way that you can tell me that the homeless problem is worse in San Diego than in San Francisco. My comment was to point out why this is so, despite the former's much nicer climate.
What does 'worse' mean?

If you mean in-your-face, I'm thinking it's an urban density thing.

SF is small and incredibly dense. So, the homeless people that are there are packed into this tiny space along with everyone else and you literally have to step over them on the way to work.

If the population of SD was packed into the geographic area of SF with no available land to the North, East, and West, everyone would be stepping over homeless people on the way to work there too.

Same with LA. People come and jam themselves wherever they can fit. If there's fewer miles of sidewalk, density of homeless people goes up, it's more visible, and you get people living on your front doorstep.

On the list of urban density, SF is number 6 and SD doesn't even make the list.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...