Seattle vs. San Francisco- which has a worse homeless problem? (places, downtown)
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Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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There is no reason for the large homeless population to "scare you". They keep their crime, filth, drugs and fires close to their tents. Just avoid them and you will be fine.
I visited San Francisco in November and I was surprised how few homeless people I saw. Based on what I had read and heard I was expecting the walking dead and it really was not that widespread where I visited. Now maybe part of this is I live in Philly and am used to a few homeless people being on the street but there was nothing in San Francisco that made me even remotely uncomfortable. I didn’t go to the tenderloin though and I understand that’s the epicenter.
I visited both in April 2021 and did see a lot of homeless in the Pioneer Square/King Street area but surprisingly I didn't see that many if any in the SF downtown area (across the Bay in the Oakland/Berkeley area was another story). I noticed in SF they were pressure washing the streets as they were just reopening for tourism. I have heard later that they were doing the same for Seattle.
Homeless in Seattle is predominantly clustered around areas immediately adjacent to I-5, Pioneer Sq, 3rd Ave, SODO. In other neighborhoods you may see a couple here and there. SF actually concentrates them a little bit more than Seattle, since 3rd Ave in Seattle is a major transit corridor and kind of unavoidable if you want to get anywhere in downtown, whereas in SF you can avoid the bad areas.
I take my toddlers out all the time to downtown Seattle (we live just 2 miles away) and it's been fine. Just have good situational awareness of the random guy who does not appear to have his mental faculties intact, but that seems like good advice walking in downtown for nearly every city larger than 500,000 people in the US. I've seen similar crazies downtown in cities like Dallas, Chicago and Boston.
The poll results are a bit confusing to me - knowing both cities very well, I'd say the homeless issues are very comparable. SF is "winning" the poll by a lot and I'll admit currently in 2023 the situation may be slightly worse there because the pandemic bounceback has been a little worse.
BUT - overall both cities have similarly large and aggressive homeless populations, at least compared to cities in the Midwest, South or Northeast (where the homeless population tends to be less visible and aggressive). Both SF and Seattle have big problems with homelessness - along with LA they are the three worst cities in the country in that regard. Ignore the poll - both are virtually equally bad!
I don't think Seattle has ever been as bad as SF or LA, where entire "skid row" neighborhoods are dominated by tents. Especially now that Downtown is mostly cleaned up.
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