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Comment by keewee7 | Hacker News Reader

Why do homeless people in the US concentrate in a few big cities with good weather?

In Denmark there are fewer of them and they are more spread out and you can also find them in rural areas.

Those few big cities have lax homelessness enforcement. Chicago used to have a massive homeless problem up into the 90s (homeless died in the winter all the time), particularly underneath the freeways and Wacker Drive downtown, then they practically made it illegal and fenced up those spaces.

Also, many cities put Homeless on a one-way bus to San Francisco and other "homeless friendly" cities.

I'm 42 and I recall Florida doing this over 20 years ago when I was in High School.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/...

For many years I lived in Beverly Hills (near Los Angeles). They have very few homeless so it's nice but the rest of LA (Los Angeles) is a disaster right now.

It's not just cities with Good Weather though because Seattle has one of the worst homeless problems. Although I don't have any stats it feels like it's mostly just a West Coast problem as I never hear about this from the middle of America or large East Coast Cities.

As imbnwa said, it's lack of enforcement. Ignore those who say that it's good weather. San Diego has homeless but not nearly as many as San Francisco, despite San Diego having probably the best weather in the US. San Francisco, however, has many more services for the homeless than San Diego.

Or Austin, which has horrible weather but its mayor just allows "city camping".

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