And this explains the California statistics how? California just churns out ridiculous numbers of crazy people? Is that the suggestion?
I have zero reason to believe that this fully accounts for one of the 50 states being home to one out of every four homeless Americans.
"One of 50 states" is a misleading statistic, given that states are nowhere near equal in population and California is the largest.
California is home to one out of every eight Americans, has good weather, and has some cities with an infamously high cost of housing. What fraction of the homeless population would you expect it to have?
Please produce citations showing that California churns out crazy people at such high rates that we should apparently consider shutting the entire state down as a human health hazard.
Surveys typically suggest that only about 10 percent of the homeless in California come from elsewhere. This leaves 90 percent of them as Californians who had a home there at one time.
Thanks in part to the lovely weather, California has the most unsheltered homeless. IIRC, it also has the most chronic homeless.
I spent nearly six years homeless, most of it in California. I left the state to get back into housing someplace cheaper.
I strongly suspect that the insane California housing prices are a major factor here, much more so than mental health issues or addiction. For every 100 poor families on the West Coast, there are only 30 affordable homes. [2]
California has about 8.5% of the US population. There is something very wrong that it has 25% of the homeless population.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territori...
[2] https://www.geekwire.com/2018/every-100-families-living-pove...
Also referring to the geek wire article, low income doesn’t necessarily mean homeless, especially chronically homeless. CA just tends to help them move to low income housing in cheaper parts of the state
I think a much more likely explanation than "California just churns out crazy people at a phenomenal rate" is "There's probably a connection between the insane housing prices and the crazy high levels of homelessness there."
For example, San Francisco: http://hsh.sfgov.org/research-reports/san-francisco-homeless...
Los Angeles: https://www.lahsa.org/documents?id=2059-2018-greater-los-ang...
According to the 2017 SF survey, 10% of homeless were out of state when they most recently became homeless. According to the 2018 LA survey, 14% were out of state.
I am not sure if you should entirely trust these numbers, or if they are asking exactly the right question---everyone involved knows that there's a right answer and a wrong answer to the question---but it's the best we have.
And according to a UCLA study, "65% of unsheltered homeless individuals have lived in the county for more than 20 years." That means 35% have been here less than 20 years.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ucla-anderson-forecast...
And how many of the homeless were born in the county? I suspect it's a very low considering so many residents in the county of L.A. aren't native born.
There's a funny advertisement for the Grinch movie here in L.A. which rings true. The line says, something like, "My favorite time of year is Christmas, when everyone goes back to where they came from."
Sounds made up. Source?
Only if California is reduced to the touristy hollywood-esque definition of LA + SF.
Inland there are tons of affordable towns and even dying towns. A while back there was even a town selling itself on eBay (and was unsuccessful at that).
I think you misread the line for California in your footnoted reference #1, which shows it at 12.14%.