REPORT FROM THE BLUE ZONES: San Francisco’s Homeless Ticking Time Bomb.

At any given moment, on any given day, there are around 8,000 people sleeping on the streets of the city — one of the wealthiest, per capita, in human history. Once acquainted with the basic facts of the crisis, including the incredible sum of money dedicated to solving the problem, the average San Franciscan concludes the city must be run by morons. How else, with billions of dollars, have city leaders failed to provide a few thousand temporary beds? Even with supportive services, the numbers don’t add up. This is because the average person assumes the small cabal of activists who run the city’s bloated homeless industrial complex want to temporarily shelter and rehabilitate the homeless. They do not. In fact, they are ideologically opposed to the concept. . . .

This year, San Francisco allotted $672 million to its Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH), whose stated mission is to “make homelessness in San Francisco rare, brief, and one-time.” Since its inception in 2016, the HSH’s budget has tripled; in total, it has received over $3.3 billion in public funds. Yet the number of people on the streets continues to grow. HSH estimates that, on any given night, around 4,400 people sleep on the city’s streets and 3,400 sleep in shelters, putting the total number of homeless people in San Francisco at around 7,800, up over 20 percent from 2005. Where is all the money going? Is well over half a billion dollars not enough to provide temporary shelter and emergency care for all 3,400 people sleeping in tents, blankets, and cars on San Francisco’s streets? Is it not enough to improve the appalling hygienic conditions that once led a UN rapporteur to compare Downtown’s encampments to Mumbai’s slums?

San Francisco’s homeless problem is too lucrative to be solved.