Editorial: Welcome to California, the Homeless State

The nation’s homelessness problem has to a disturbing degree become California’s homelessness problem. While the latest counts compiled by the federal government show that America’s homeless population is growing again after more than a decade of declines, the entire national increase and more can be attributed to California alone.

With a majority of states experiencing decreases in homelessness over the past year and only one small state, New Mexico, suffering a larger proportionate increase, California’s dire statistics underscore the extent to which state and local policies drive an extraordinary and persistent failure to shelter the equivalent of a midsize city. Although the state has the worst housing shortage on the U.S. mainland, resistance to dealing with it remains endemic among the Legislature’s ruling Democrats and in nominally progressive cities such as San Francisco.