I was born in what became Silicon Valley, but lived in Hawaii (8 years) and San Diego (11 Years) as a child before returning to the Bay Area. Few outside the LA Basin love LA. The rest of us hate it for the sheer waste (water wasting habits, nouveau riche tastes, seemingly endless traffic jams, etc). Guess it’s a good thing you didn’t make it to the Bay Area’s world-class Wine Country.
;–)
In the Sixties and Seventies, hippies used to congregate on Highway 101’s island’s in downtown Santa Barbara. They’d have their cardboard signs with their eventual destinations marked on them. This was when there were still stoplights and it was just a regular, but busy, surface street through town.
The labels have changed, but the lure of California still draws in young and restless unemployed people with big dreams. The high cost of living, especially housing, prevents many minimum wage employees from finding permanent accommodations. Others have run into debt (as I did) or other troubles that cause them to lose their shelter.
Personally, I don’t hand out cash, but I regularly donate to groups (which are not affiliated with organized religious groups) that help the poor.
It is extremely difficult to escape homelessness. I managed it about 27 months after I was evicted only because I won my Social Security Disability case. Conjuring up instant housing sounds like the solution, but isn’t possible (nowhere to build that much housing; who funds the rent subsidies?) and doesn’t solve the actual cause of many cases of homelessness. Many, but not all, homeless people suffer from mental health or addiction issues. There aren’t enough spaces in programs to assist with those issues. There is a general lack of funding throughout the social services.
The stereotypical homeless person you see is only the tip of the iceberg. Couch-surfers are counted as homeless by the Feds. People who live in their cars or RVs are also officially homeless. Most of those people are employed and/or are students. A significant portion of the homeless aren’t included in the official statistics because they either don’t think of themselves as homeless or are too embarrassed to admit their status to anyone.
California is a victim of its own success.
Visit California, spend all your money here, and go home!
;–)