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Our San Francisco bureau chief, Thomas Fuller, has been covering homelessness in the Bay Area for the past few years. In Oakland alone, the number of homeless people has risen 47 percent since 2017, to more than 4,000.

Thomas met Mark-Steven Holys, 61, who lives in an encampment off the 880 freeway. The story of Mr. Holys, once a skilled sommelier before his life unraveled, resonated with readers, who responded with anecdotes about their own struggles finding housing and lamented the elusiveness of a solution to a crisis that has touched so many families.

Of the nearly 1,000 comments, Thomas writes, one was particularly poignant:

“Hello. My name is Michael Mark Holys. And this article is about my father.”

Writing from New York, Michael Holys referenced his own problems with homelessness, which unlike in his father’s case was not because of drugs or crime, he said. He has been forced to choose between food, medicine and shelter, he wrote.

“Good luck, Dad,” he said. “Love you.”

That homelessness spanned two generations of the Holys family seemed another measure of the gravity and pervasiveness of the problem.