I don’t think Scott is talking about the bay area in that quote, is he?
(ETA: also if his estimate is per year then I think it’s similar to the report you quoted, which estimates $700M/year to provide shelter to all of the homeless at a cost of ~$25k/person/year, so that seems like another plausible source of discrepancy.)
Over the whole US, the initial capital costs would still be much higher than $100/person, I think, but annualized makes more sense. (See this article which gives a similar annualized figure over the whole US.) I added a clarification to my comment.
But if $100/person/year is low enough that most people would prefer to have everyone just pay that to solve homelessness, it becomes a bigger puzzle why people don’t just vote that into policy.
I don’t think Scott is talking about the bay area in that quote, is he?
(ETA: also if his estimate is per year then I think it’s similar to the report you quoted, which estimates $700M/year to provide shelter to all of the homeless at a cost of ~$25k/person/year, so that seems like another plausible source of discrepancy.)
Over the whole US, the initial capital costs would still be much higher than $100/person, I think, but annualized makes more sense. (See this article which gives a similar annualized figure over the whole US.) I added a clarification to my comment.
But if $100/person/year is low enough that most people would prefer to have everyone just pay that to solve homelessness, it becomes a bigger puzzle why people don’t just vote that into policy.