How Large Is the Bay Area's Homeless Population?

Still, much of the discussion has centered on San Francisco, or on the efforts of individual cities throughout the region.

On Wednesday, the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, the think-tank arm of a business group, was to release a report that examines the issue through a regional lens.

“One of the things about the Bay Area is, it’s a wonderful place, but it’s very divided up,” Jim Wunderman, the council’s president and chief executive, told me. “We have 101 cities in nine countiesaround this very large bay, and there’s no one city that dominates the landscape.”

But that isn’t how programs aimed at moving people into housing have been implemented, he said, even as more people in smaller suburbs find themselves in tenuous housing situations, and more people live out of their cars, which means they’re mobile.

The group wanted to explore ways to scale up successful programs and boost coordination among communities. To do that, Wunderman said, the group needed to better understand what was at stake.

The report found:

— Roughly 28,200 people were homeless across the Bay Area, according to point-in-time counts in 2017. That was the third-largest population in the country, after New York (76,500) and Los Angeles (55,200). The next-largest overall number was 11,600 in Seattle and King County.

— But the Bay Area has a relatively large percentage of homeless people without shelter (indicating there’s a shortage of subsidized housing, short-term shelters and transitional housing). That was 67 percent.

That’s compared with just 5 percent in New York and 47 percent in Seattle and King County. Once again, though, Los Angeles had the largest percentage of unsheltered homeless people: 75 percent.

— The analysis found that spending on services for people experiencing homelessness or people who were at risk varied widely across the region. Part of that stems from the fact that the costs to build vary widely.

For instance, the report said, building new permanently supportive housing costs $730,560 on average per unit in San Francisco County, compared with $393,580 per unit on average in Solano County.

However, Wunderman said that particular finding shouldn’t be taken as a sign that services, housing and emergency shelter should be concentrated in the least expensive parts of the Bay Area.

“We’re going to continue to need to develop programs locally,” he said. “I think this is a burden that has to be shouldered by everyone.”

Wunderman suggested one way to persuade communities to do their part: Tie state money to initiatives.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.