California Needs to Learn from Houston & Dallas; Especially About Homelessness
5th October 2025
Walk through downtown San Francisco or Los Angeles and you’ll navigate a shifting obstacle course of tents, human waste, and unstable individuals. Business districts that once thrived now see foot traffic evaporate as customers avoid entire blocks. Parents can’t take children to public parks. Elderly residents can’t use their own sidewalks. The social contract that public spaces belong to everyone has collapsed.
Between 2015 and 2022, Los Angeles County’s homeless population surged by 56% while Houston’s fell by 32%. Today, California houses 28% of America’s homeless population with just 12% of its residents. San Francisco’s homelessness rate is nearly 20 times higher than Houston’s.
California has spent over $27 billion on homelessness in recent years. The difference is systems architecture. Houston and Dallas built something that works. California built something that doesn’t, then spent billions pretending otherwise.
This matters because instability breeds instability. When encampments persist for years, residents and business owners face constant uncertainty. When sweeps just move people two blocks over, when every neighborhood waits to see if it will host the next relocated camp, the crisis simply shifts location without resolution.