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California Today

California Today: The Homeless Millennial Connection

Stormy Nichole Day, left, and Nord, with his dog, Hobo, on Haight Street. A measure on San Francisco’s ballot would tax the city’s wealthiest companies to raise $300 million for homelessness and mental health services.Credit...Jeff Chiu/Associated Press

Good morning.

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Voters in San Francisco next week will decide whether to aggressively ramp up funding to combat homelessness. A tax on large businesses known as Proposition C would raise up to $300 million annually.

It’s similar to the $1.2 billion bond that Los Angeles voters approved two years ago to build thousands of homes for the chronically homeless.

Will these measures work? Much depends on how quickly and how well they are carried out, and what happens to the economy.

Dennis Culhane, an expert on homelessness at the University of Pennsylvania, says there is also a much more unappreciated factor: demographics.

The current acute homelessness crisis in cities across California corresponds with the coming-of-age of the millennial generation, which at its peak in the mid-1990s had more births than at any time since the baby boomers of the 1950s and ’60s.

A previous bout of severe homelessness came in the 1980s, when the second half of the baby boomers were in their 20s.

These large groups of young people can push up rents as they search for apartments, aggravating the housing shortage.

“We certainly see that homelessness in this population is bigger relative to the generation before them,” Dr. Culhane said.

And by dint of their numbers, millennials may be also straining the mental health system.

“There is anecdotal evidence from cities I’ve been to where people are saying that this young adult population with severe mental illness is overwhelming the health system,” Dr. Culhane said. “It doesn’t take many people to have a big impact.”

What does demography say about the future of homelessness in California?

Nationally, births declined for seven years from the millennial generation peak of 4.2 million. There may be some hope in that. Yet the millennial cohort will be with us for decades longer — and Dr. Culhane believes it will take a “massive infusion of resources” to assist the neediest among them.

“At the scale of homelessness we are witnessing on the West Coast, little pilot efforts here and there are not going to make a dent,” he said.

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This is the 10th and final puzzle in our series of California-themed crosswords, written by the veteran Times crossword constructor and San Diego resident Bruce Haight.

Today’s puzzle will end on a positive note, as we explore environmentalism in California. One of the pioneers of the conservation movement can be found in symmetrical positions in this puzzle.

If you liked solving these, another 10 California-themed puzzles are available on the New York Times Crossword app for $1.99. Just go the Packs section and look for the title “California Dreamin’.”

(Please note: We regularly highlight articles on news sites that have limited access for nonsubscribers.)

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Google employees protested at the company’s Mountain View headquarters on Thursday.Credit...Stephen Lam/Reuters

• Google employees around the world staged walkouts over the company’s handling of sexual harassment. [The New York Times]

• Sundar Pichai, the chief executive, issued a mea culpa of sorts at the DealBook conference in New York. “At Google, we set a very high bar, and we clearly didn’t live up to our expectations,” he said. [The New York Times]

• Representative Duncan Hunter and his Democratic challenger, Ammar Campa-Najjar, couldn’t be more different. But they have one strategy in common: relying on veterans to portray the other as unfit for office. [The Los Angeles Times]

• Representative Dana Rohrabacher might be the most divisive congressman in California. In an interview, he detailed his views on climate change, marijuana and Arnold Schwarzenegger. [Pacific Standard]

• A Fresno prosecutor might just be the one to take down Representative Devin Nunes. [Rolling Stone]

More women are running for Congress (and winning) than ever before — except in California. [The Conversation]

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“Because I live in California and attend a Chinese church, my experience is different from what I see in the news,” said Curtis Yee, 22.Credit...Cayce Clifford for The New York Times

• “I’m Democrat by default, simply by the way things have gone with the Republican Party over the past few years, but it is an uneasy alliance,” a young Sacramento voter said. Young evangelicals from around the country spoke to us about the relationship between their faith and their politics. [The New York Times]

California is America’s poorest state, but it is also among the richest. NIMBYism, immigration and the success of Silicon Valley and Hollywood have widened inequality. [The Economist]

• Quarterback Nick Mullens, in his first N.F.L. game, was the story of the final Battle of the Bay, helping the 49ers to a 34-3 rout of the Raiders. [San Francisco Chronicle]

• Should Mark Zuckerberg still be running Facebook? This is the answer our tech columnist heard from just about everyone in the industry. [The New York Times]

• Apple posted more than $14 billion in profit for the third quarter as consumers proved willing to pay higher prices for its products. [The New York Times]

• The Golden State Warriors definitely appear to be having more fun this season, our columnist writes. The result: They may be better than ever. [The New York Times]

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The venerable burrito at Papalote Taqueria in San Francisco, a few decades after a local food writer’s confusion.Credit...Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

• “A short, fat rectangle.” This is what happened when The San Francisco Chronicle discovered burritos in 1977. [San Francisco Chronicle]

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Happy Halloween, San Francisco.Credit...ABC7 News Bay Area, via YouTube

If you happened to be wandering around downtown San Francisco on Halloween night, you might have noticed an unusual sight at the top of Salesforce Tower: flames with an ominous flickering eye in the middle.

As it turns out, more than 11,000 people signed a Change.org petition urging Salesforce’s chief executive, Marc Benioff, and others to turn the tower’s LED display into the Eye of Sauron from “The Lord of the Rings.”

“It has been said that bonds are formed through shared experiences, the strongest of which are forged in fire,” the petition reads. “We ask of you to help us unite the city, and raise the torch on Halloween night as one community, together.”

Perhaps it was the petition’s begrudgingly inclusive ending that persuaded the Salesforce gods: “Oakland can come, too.”

California Today goes live at 6 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes.com.

California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from U.C. Berkeley.

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