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Your binary divide between worthy homeless and unworthy is simplistic. Why, for example, do some cities have far more homeless people than others.

The high number of homeless people really struck me when I visited San Francisco a couple of years ago, and it's worth as a city asking why. For a wealthy place, it was incredibly sad and surprising too.

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Mild weather and tolerance/support of homelessness tends to draw more in.

Minimally, though. Most of the people you'll encounter are locals.

How do you know they are local? Based on statistics? What do you define as local? If they have been here for 5 years is it local?

I'd really like to see demographic statistics comparing the homeless from different cities. I'm especially interested in the mean/median distance a homeless person is from their home town (or at least the last town where they had a stable lifestyle.)

I suspect SF has a greater number of homeless per capita that aren't from SF. The city is very supportive and I reckon that it is an ideal place to be homeless if you have some means to travel.

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