our social safety nets are long past stressed.    But the problem in California and some other liberal cities is that it is too easy to be homeless.  They have changed the laws to make it easy.  They have also passed laws saying any theft that the value is less than 1000 dollars and the cops will not investigate.  So the homeless know they can steal anything under $1000 and even if caught they will not be prosecuted.  This puts all your possessions and store/restaurant inventory up for grabs.  San Francisco announced they would no longer respond to any violation of the 36 laws designed to protect Quality of life in cities by limiting homeless populations freedom to squat etc.  They said the spent 20 million in 2015 responding to these calls and they were not going to do it anymore. Other cities have done similar changes.  So you can set a tent up and live on a downtown street for example. This is crazy.  Imagine you pay more to live close to a cities ammenities and suddenly someone takes up long term residence in front of your home on the sidewalk.  They have no bathroom so they start peeing and pooping out there.  They start collecting junk and pilling it around their tent.  They own no trash can so trash is allowed to just blow free all over the street. Then they get neighbors and soon every inch of the sidewalk is filled.  Drinking a lot happens all the time with the homeless, so these folks are often drunk and many are mentally ill and it's all right outside your front door.      And so the homeless have increased and taken over And advocates for the homeless say that going back to enforcing the laws would only exacerbate the problem  They dont have any reason they can give for how except that it would make living on the streets harder to do.  My CA city has a huge homelessness problem.  Many are visibly disabled and should be on Social security, and have a decent  sliding scale apartment origianlly built to house them,  but a lot of those are all full of "refuges" now.  Without an address they cannot be on social security and even if they were on social security it does not pay enough to afford rent which has gone up sharply in the past 5 years.   Social security payemnts stat at $500 dollars and increase upward to somewhere around $3000 and is based on incomes prior to retirement or disability.     Others are young and appear to be healthy. Rents will start coming down in cities as people leave and maybe then young somewhat healthy people will find it less hopeless to try and make their way.  To rent an apartment in CA is not cheap.