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I'm not as positive as you are about what makes California (and Seattle) create/attract

The weather is pretty nice, much more stable than in the east coast.

Yes, if you didn't understand my point: there are homeless people in every society, but most do not have as many as silicon valley because they pressure them into accepting the help necessary to restore their ability to make rational decisions. Rational people do not choose to live outside on the sidewalk like rats, people who are drug addicted and who have untreated mental illness do.

Here is how you get to 1/3:

1. Widen the definition of 'homeless' to cover people that nobody would consider homeless in every day language. Include anyone who is staying with a friend, living in corporate housing, staying with a family member, etc. Include anyone you possibly can that is unlikely to be a drug addict.

2. Narrow the definition of homeless. Don't consider people that almost everyone does consider homeless. Make sure to target the subgroups of homeless people that are very likely to use drugs.

3. Narrow the definition of drug use. Make it as hard as possible to count someone as having used drugs. Raise the evidentiary bar so high that even when you have evidence they are a drug addict it doesn't qualify them as a "drug addict" by the studies definition. Bury that definition so it's technically there but you have to go through the study carefully to find it.

Lets pick a study in a big important journal and check it for the above:

How about CASPEH: "Illicit Substance Use and Treatment Access Among Adults Experiencing Homelessness," JAMA, 2025

JAMA is a very prestigious journal:

Who counts as a substance user: Only meth, nonprescription opioids, cocaine/crack count as addictions. Cannabis, alcohol, benzos, hallucinogens, inhalants are excluded.

Someone who has a valid prescription to opiates, even if they are being abused, cannot be methodologically counted as a drug addict. THIS INCLUDES METHADONE.

What counts as addict: "Regular" = 3+ times per week. A twice-weekly meth user is 'occasional use'. They might take a gram and stay up for 3 days twice a week, but they are 'occasional user' and don't count in the 37% addict number quoted by this paper.

What counts as addict: Last 6 months only. If you admit you used fentanyl every day for the last 10 years but claim you got clean 181 days ago, you are not a drug user according to this study. If they have been diverted from heroin onto methadone 181 days ago you do not count.

How did they check? They asked each person face to face whether they used drugs and which ones and how often and just took their word for it.

The real numbers from the raw data the study used:

41.6% of homeless self reported 2x per week or more hard drug use before they became homeless. an additional 23.2% claimed they started regular use after becoming homeless.

That's about 65% already from their own data, 2x what the headline pretends.

Excluding high use subgroups: to be included in the data, the homeless person had to prove they were giving informed consent. Then they additionally had to be willing and able to spend 45 minutes or so filling out the survey. The people with psychosis or who were intoxicated at the time of the interview were excluded. How many people have you walked past and they were incoherent, unconscious, or high? They were ignored in this study.

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The equilibrium for new housing construction will always be "just enough to keep it expensive by local standards [i.e. by local wages]." That's especially true with rising labor, material, and capital costs.

It was actually the post-war housing boom that was abnormal, fueled by aggressive federal funding of suburban buildout. US municipalities are now broadly doomed to bankruptcy trying to maintain sprawling infrastructure that was never cost-effective to create in the first place.

Look at Austin TX. Influx of new building, prices stabilized, and now construction is dropping off a cliff. No one can afford to build into a stable or potentially falling local market. Construction will start again when local productivity grows enough for people to bid the prices back up again.

Assume you have an area with a certain productivity and rent. Population and housing are growing at a certain rate.

Now make a law that makes construction cheaper. Or make a law that makes construction more expensive. What happens to rent and mortgages, even though productivity hasn't changed at all?

Productivity (or, rather, wealth) of the occupants is a very strong factor, but it is still just one of multiple factors.

> Can you show me a place with high local productivity and low rent?

Put the following prompt into your favourite AI and enjoy the reading:

"How do rents relate to productivity in the area? How does Vienna compare to San Francisco?"