services, opportunities, and sort of a community for homeless people. If I were homeless, I would rather be in SF than, say, Fremont.

There were two converts in my previous ward in SF that were homeless elsewhere, moved to San Francisco, and eventually became self-sufficient, in no small part due to the opportunities available to them through the city.

I know it's popular to trot out the picture of the single mom with 3 kids who works 3 jobs and is homeless as a result of the evil rich tech employees riding the Google bus, but I don't know that there is evidence out there to support that claim.

I agree. The issue isn't the tech employees, or even the tech companies. That's simply additional demand for housing. The problem is that the city has done nothing on the supply side to accommodate for the population growth that's a direct consequence of the bustling tech economy in the area.

Compare the number of jobs created in SF, the Peninsula, and the South Bay in the last ten years compared to how much housing has been built. The numbers are terrible. The few "solutions" that politicians have implemented are just band-aids that often make the problem worse, like rent control and "affordable housing" requirements.

I'll see if I can find good studies later, but I don't think it's far fetched to say that the high housing costs in the are the main reason behind *some* of the homelessness in San Francisco. This doesn't mean that drug use and mental illness is not a factor as well.