This is anecdotal from browsing vagabond sources, but there’s a lot of reasons NYC might have fewer homeless.
A) The pigs and rules on the east coast are a lot more brutal towards the homeless than the west coast. This both leads to migration away from the east coast and for the homeless that are there to be much more invisible.
B) The west coast has a history of being relatively welcoming to the houseless / a lot of lore built up around it, so people tend to gravitate towards it.
C) The west coast has a much more survivable climate than the east coast - this is the reason I hear the most.
As a local, I’ll add what I think are more meaningful differences.
First, most homeless people in CA are locals who were forced out, not interstate homeless migrants looking for a good place to be homeless.
The main reason is that CA doesn’t have nearly as many temporary shelters for people to go to. And as you noted, it’s more survivable to live outdoors.
Overall, NYC still has a pretty big population of folks in shelters, but CA has way more folks living in cars, trailers, and tents.
NYC doesn’t have as bad of a homeless issue as LA.
Because you’ll literally die the very first winter night you’re homeless without shelter in NYC. They have a bunch of shelters, so the problem is less visible, and when they run out of space they bus them to L.A… Those that remain are found frozen to death in the morning.
NYC also has a roughly equivalent homeless population to LA, but LA has less than half the population than NYC.
Being a NYC native, I can agree that if the situation definitely is not visible. But considering the population differences, I’d say it’s not as bad in NYC.
NYC doesn’t have as bad of a homeless issue as LA.
But NYC is also an extremely expensive place to live, and built vertically due to a lack of space for outward expansion.
Might also be good to point out that NYC has a lot more commercial office and high-end condo development than high-density housing.
But that also has a lot to do with how expensive land is, which is mostly due to it being land-locked as mentioned.
This is anecdotal from browsing vagabond sources, but there’s a lot of reasons NYC might have fewer homeless.
A) The pigs and rules on the east coast are a lot more brutal towards the homeless than the west coast. This both leads to migration away from the east coast and for the homeless that are there to be much more invisible.
B) The west coast has a history of being relatively welcoming to the houseless / a lot of lore built up around it, so people tend to gravitate towards it.
C) The west coast has a much more survivable climate than the east coast - this is the reason I hear the most.
As a local, I’ll add what I think are more meaningful differences.
First, most homeless people in CA are locals who were forced out, not interstate homeless migrants looking for a good place to be homeless.
The main reason is that CA doesn’t have nearly as many temporary shelters for people to go to. And as you noted, it’s more survivable to live outdoors.
Overall, NYC still has a pretty big population of folks in shelters, but CA has way more folks living in cars, trailers, and tents.
Yeah there was a whole purge policy Giuliani set up.
Funny how those rules never went away under Dem control.
Because you’ll literally die the very first winter night you’re homeless without shelter in NYC. They have a bunch of shelters, so the problem is less visible, and when they run out of space they bus them to L.A… Those that remain are found frozen to death in the morning.
NYC also has a roughly equivalent homeless population to LA, but LA has less than half the population than NYC.
Being a NYC native, I can agree that if the situation definitely is not visible. But considering the population differences, I’d say it’s not as bad in NYC.
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Hm, that article is putting LA at about 75k homeless.
NYC also has more than twice the total population of LA. So homed to homeless ratio is a lot worse in LA
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