> But the approach to dealing with that subset of people should be different than the approach for the subset who were once employed and renting in San Francisco and then ended up homeless through a health emergency, job loss, or eviction.
How do you even begin to discriminate on that? The USA lacks a residency system like other countries.
I agree with your point, but it’s not possible to implement here, which is why the non profits continue the conflation.
For San Francisco in particular, if you work in San Francisco, you pay a local income tax of ~0.4%. Make having paid that (say, $50 paid by either you or the person you're married to) or having attended an SFUSD school as qualifiers for assistance.
That covers the large majority of homeless that SF should target for help and are all easily accessible to the city government, with no documentation required by the applicant. You can imagine corner cases (attended a private school, lived in SF but worked outside it) but it'd be an improvement over the status quo. Even many of the corner cases could be captured with additional documentation that would require a bit more effort on the applicant's side.
How do you even begin to discriminate on that? The USA lacks a residency system like other countries.
I agree with your point, but it’s not possible to implement here, which is why the non profits continue the conflation.