There are multiple sides to this issue. On one side, homeless people often seem to feel entitled to live wherever they want to without paying a penny in rent or taxes, while actual residents in California are paying through the nose in both those categories. People like myself don't believe people have the right to live wherever they want regardless of ability to afford it. This obviously creates tensions.
On another side, California's housing policies at both the government and NIMBY homeowner level have been so asinine for so long that it's impossible for lower-income people to afford rent in major metro areas and people are finding themselves on the street after being priced out of their own homes on a regular basis. Then they stay in the same area, homeless, because of reason #1 above.
On a third side, Californians have been paying a huge amount of money for homeless programs, rehab programs, education programs, and I don't even know what else (it's hard to keep up with all the ballot measures) for quite some time with limited visible effect. Now there are measures to build homeless shelters not in places where residents wouldn't complain, but in extremely high property value places like Marina del Rey. Again, see reason #1 above.
And on yet another side, articles like [1] like to downplay the effects of homeless immigration from other states, but at least 13% of SoCal homeless people came from somewhere else. Politicians at the federal level like to tout dropping national homeless numbers as something to be proud of, but in reality Californians are paying, at least in part, for other states' refusal to deal with their own homeless problems.
At some point, I began skimming, but this article doesn't even seem to list the worst stuff.
I archived the San Diego Homeless Survival Guide (and started Street Life Solutions as its replacement) I part because of a string of murders. Someone was setting tents on fire.
There was also a deadly Hepatitis outbreak disproportionately impacting the homeless population and other things that factored into my decision, but some of the backlash against the homeless in California literally includes murdering some of the homeless.
The government of California has been systematically attacking its own housing market for years and this is the entirely predictable (and predicted) result. Regulations and zoning discourages new housing construction while rent control drives housing providers out of the market.
On another side, California's housing policies at both the government and NIMBY homeowner level have been so asinine for so long that it's impossible for lower-income people to afford rent in major metro areas and people are finding themselves on the street after being priced out of their own homes on a regular basis. Then they stay in the same area, homeless, because of reason #1 above.
On a third side, Californians have been paying a huge amount of money for homeless programs, rehab programs, education programs, and I don't even know what else (it's hard to keep up with all the ballot measures) for quite some time with limited visible effect. Now there are measures to build homeless shelters not in places where residents wouldn't complain, but in extremely high property value places like Marina del Rey. Again, see reason #1 above.
And on yet another side, articles like [1] like to downplay the effects of homeless immigration from other states, but at least 13% of SoCal homeless people came from somewhere else. Politicians at the federal level like to tout dropping national homeless numbers as something to be proud of, but in reality Californians are paying, at least in part, for other states' refusal to deal with their own homeless problems.
[1] https://www.politifact.com/california/article/2018/jun/28/di...