David,

That's called and informed source, speaking on the condition of anonymity.....ain't nothing "anecdotal" about that...….

We have had a serious, omnipresent, and slowly growing homeless crisis, since the mid nineties when I worked in downtown LA. A friend with a cab license took me on an afternoon trip of SF back then, showing me all of the drug dens, hooker hangouts (of all tastes and persuasions), and the small army of homeless, in a number of neighborhoods, as he showed me the more glamorous parts of his job (he was often called on to pick up Gorbachev because he was an American who spoke Russian), and so we went to all of the real nice parts of SF, too.

One reason homelessness has clearly grown much worse, in my lifetime, is because we have the industrialized worlds poorest mental health systems (releasing thousands of individuals in dire need of supervision and/or assistance on to the street, to be robbed, raped, ignored, exploited, go off of their meds, get into more trouble, and go back and forth, into and out of the County jails).

We have a very poor prison release system(dumping petty criminals from our costly and overcrowded prison system onto the streets, without transitional supervised housing, training, or sufficient usable work skills, and little likelihood making much money through any legal means, get into more trouble, and be rotated through the County jails, too.

We have very poor social support for dysfunctional families or families living "on the edge" subject to being de-housed by uncontrolled economic events or circumstances (a car breakdown, cut in work hours, a husband in jail, an illness, a child's illness, etc.). This has always been there, but high housing costs, are making more of these folks, live "closer to the edge" (often in there cars with kids), where they are more likely to fall off....

We have some of the world's dumbest drug laws and policies, enriching criminals with a lucrative criminal black market, while causing more problems than they solve, wasting lives and resources by using the criminal justice system on folks with a medical and/or psychological problem, while helping prop up that black market, leaving the rest of us to pay these social and quality of life "costs". Which, along with the above, that there are so many of these hard core users "on the street". And yes, it is a public health problem, we see significant rates of HIV and Hepatitis from IV street drug use, but, alas, no sign yet of plague...….

Finally, we have an increasing divide in the quality and quantity of the housing stock we've been building for the last 25 years. Up until the crash in 2008 we were building a lot of oversized (relative to shrinking family size) "spec" suburban homes, with high mark ups. Then, over the last 10 years, we have been building a lot of "in-fill" oversized (relative to shrinking family size)urban condos, with high mark ups....which does little to increase affordable aggregate rental stocks.

Maybe, if we want "affordable" housing, we should try what they did back from Roosevelt through Nixon, and give big middle class tax cuts for putting rental properties on the market, and being able to write off more maintenance and depreciation..... That would "distort the market" by giving preferential tax treatment to average joes and reward "slum lords", so both of the lunatic political fringes would hate it.... Which is probably why it worked so well, for so many years...……. But, of course, we just did the opposite, we just did away with those "distorting" tax breaks for developers to do affordable housing, making this housing more costly to produce......which then causes less to be produced.

This is being posted where we talk about Choo-choo's, because this is just another place this problem sometimes rears its ugly head, and makes us notice.

And, just maybe, SF (aka "Frisco") has gone straight to hell, in the two years since I last rolled through...? I admit I haven't used BART and/or Muni, since 2013, so maybe "hell boy" does now completely rule the underground, unmolested and unimpeded by any sign of civilization in the "City"...?

Which is probably why, as we all can plainly see, the housing market in SF just sucks, with falling prices, and people leaving, because they can't make any money there....right?

And, maybe,, just maybe there are actually vast hidden mountains of human excrement from the homeless that Laura was able to find, on the constantly police patrolled and monitored LA MTA, that I just have yet to encounter....? Don't know...

Just because I haven't seen them, doesn't mean they don't exist, even if only in the imagination of the readers and viewers of such stories.

I like Hutchies train videos more..... I think Neil Young's Southern Pacific would make a better sound track, though.....