- Good climate: Absolutely. It's much tougher being homeless in the winter in Chicago than it is in California.
- Legal weed: There's legal weed all over the country and the homeless aren't known for buying weed from legal shops are they lol. No 'open air drug market weed' for me, sir, I'm going to the Shambhala Healing Center, says the man strung out on fenty. [1] Missouri and Illinois have legal recreational weed and some of the lowest rates of per capita homelessness [2] so you can pretty much strike this theory off your list.
- Open air drug markets: again, drugs may be visible here, but you can buy drugs in any city in this country. Opioids are the real problem, fentanyl in particular, and if you look at this map of opioid deaths by state you'll see the real crisis isn't in California but in West Virginia, which has 4X the deaths per capita. [3]
- Soft on crime prosecutors: it does have these.
- Liberal population that wants to provide for them: does it?
Honestly if the maps say anything to me, it's that all of the US' homelessness is along the west coast where the weather's nice. I think that might be the entire story.
Not you, haha, I meant if weed is the only thing a police officer can find then it feels like a false pretense for arrest. I liked your response tbh, I didn’t catch what you mentioned initially.
Good climate
Cities provide cash payments to them
Legal marijuana
Open air drug markets
Soft on crime prosecutors
Liberal population that wants to provide for them
Note: I make no judgement value on any of these items, just proposing reasons