[Sarcasm] The Sacred Homeless [/Sarcasm] are not homogeneous. There are some who are sober, skilled, and employed, but are unable to find and afford an apartment or house. They are the ones affected by what Carson (for whom I would have voted in California's meaningless 2016 Primary, had he not dropped out so early) accurately called out. Government has created housing scarcity, with predictable rising costs as people wanting housing bid up the price.
But these are not the ones camping on sidewalks and along creeks or littering parks with their persons. They are living in motorhomes, vans, and cars at night. Many of these are likely eventually to save up enough $$ that they can get a place (OK, at $2000 per month rent, how much would it cost to pay the move-in cost of first and last month's rent plus a month's rent security deposit?!). The term I've heard to describe these people, to distinguish them from the chronically/willfully homeless is Houseless.
The ones camping on sidewalks and along creeks or littering parks with their persons are a mix of people who are insane, chemically dependent, and those simply unwilling to abide by normal social "rules". SF has been subsidizing and enabling these people and their chemical habits (Can you say, "Needle exchange programs"?) for 2 or 3 decades, and gotten more of what they subsidized, predictably. What has been in development for 20 or 30 years is not going to be solved by a year or two of anything, and throwing $$ at it subsidizes it.
