If anyone was looking for some easy money, move to San Francisco. It may have sky-high rent, and terrible governance, but if you decide to go homeless, you could get a startling $620 a month from the city government via a simple phone call, and spend your days watching Netflix and enjoying the city’s views.
At least, that’s according to a San Francisco homeless man who told journalist Michael Shellenberger what life is like for him as a homeless person in one of the United States’ most iconic cities. The video itself is from the middle of 2025, but it has gone viral across social media as yet another example of the terrible policies of California's major cities.
EXPOSED 🚨 California Democrats are paying people to be homeless
— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) May 20, 2026
Homeless man moved across country to California to be homeless
“How long you been in San Francisco?”
Homeless man “Since June. If you're gonna be homeless, it's pretty f*cking easy here. I mean, if we're gonna be… pic.twitter.com/X7j9ut09pm
"If you're gonna be homeless, it's pretty fuckin' easy here," the man said. "I mean, if we're gonna be realistic, they pay you to be homeless here. "
"When you said that San Francisco pays people to be homeless, what did you mean by that?" Shellenberger asked. "You mean that literally?"
"Yeah. I mean, I get six hundred and twenty bucks a month, dude."
"From general assistance, or... How was that hard to get?"
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"A f**kin' phone call, bro. A f**kin' phone call. Two hundred food stamps and six hundred and twenty bucks cash a month. Forget about it. Why wouldn't I do it? You know, it's f**kin' free money, dude. This right now is literally by choice. Literally by choice. Like, why would I want to pay rent? I'm not doing shit. I got a f**kin' cell phone that I have Amazon Prime and Netflix on."
And yet your average Democrat would deny this man’s “lived experience” and argue that not only do the city’s homeless not want to be homeless, but that the city’s policies are helping keep people off the streets—claims not always backed up by available data.
This comes as a report by the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal found that a significant share of California’s homeless population may not even be from the state, with nearly 40 percent of Los Angeles’ homeless population not originally from California, and six percent not even from the United States.
It is unclear whether those figures hold across other major cities in the state, but it is not difficult to assume similar patterns may exist.
The man living in San Francisco said he himself was from the Southern United States, either Louisiana or Texas, and has become a burden on Golden State taxpayers while contributing little to the economy.
While it may appear that Californians are indifferent to how their money is being spent, many Republicans and independents are not. Republican candidates, including Steve Hilton and Spencer Pratt, have dominated two of the state’s high-profile races, signaling a possible shift in a traditionally Democratic stronghold.
Hilton, who is running for governor in particular, has claimed that at least half a trillion dollars in taxpayer money has been wasted or tied up in fraud scandals, while state officials have remained largely silent, continuing to defend their wasteful government programs.
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