This opinion piece today suggests that it's us as the population too: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/31/opinion/california-homelessness-progressives.html

"Take Proposition 13, for starters, this law that has been around for over 40 years. Massively caps property taxes. Prop 13 has gutted public resources and incentivized Californians to hold on to their homes for as long as possible.

"And then there’s zoning. Nearly 96 percent of residential land in California, so almost all of it, is exclusively zoned for single-family homes. That means no multifamily apartments and no public housing complexes. So how do we hope to address homelessness if we can’t build any housing anywhere?

"...a community meeting in Millbrae, Calif.

"Hundreds of residents had shown up to protest a plan that would transform a La Quinta Inn into interim housing.

"...The county executive tried to explain the plan, but people just kept shouting him down.

"Here I was in a county where 78 percent of the residents voted for Joe Biden, but the meeting had the dark energy of a Donald Trump rally, circa 2016. It felt like the whole town would rather burn down the La Quinta Inn than use it to house the most vulnerable.

"Study after study confirms that the solution to homelessness is permanent affordable housing. But the kind of resistance I witnessed in Millbrae has prevented the state from building anything close to the amount of affordable housing it needs."