I would like to recommend a podcast called 'According to Need' [0] (by some of the 99% Invisible crew) which talks about homelessness in the Bay Area. I don't quite understand some of the local context, but there's only 5 episodes and I found it really interesting.
This report doesn't go into very much detail what "sheltered" means. Does a tent count? Does sleeping in an alcove in front of a store count?
As i read it there was a large increse in shelter capacity. The amoubt of street homelessness dropped by about 20% because there was an increase of shelter space of about 20%. Its of course not a 1:1 ratio but pretty close,. Basically nothing has changed
So, this runs rather counter to the news stories I have been reading about the SF homeless situation. That means, either:
1) the numbers are bogus (e.g. they are missing a higher percentage of homeless in their count than they did in 2019)
2) the remaining homeless are more problematic in their behavior, thus causing more of a problem even though there are fewer of them
3) the newsmedia are just printing stories about the homeless in SF more often because it gets clicks, and homelessness is not actually a worsening problem in SF
I would be curious to hear from any SF-resident HN readers as to their opinions on which of these options is more likely.