We were in CA in August and I actually thought SF was BETTER than it was back in 2005, the last time we visited. There were homeless people on the streets, but many had been moved to a more permanent site with marked pitches near Union Square where facilities such as toilets, showers and charities providing food were present and the streets themselves were cleaner. The Tenderloin, however, which we went through on a tour, was still very grimy with lots of street homeless. The main tourist areas were much improved though, in our opinion.
As for LA, we were shocked by the tents everywhere - on the pavement, along the side of the freeways, under bridges, in car parks, basically all over the city. There were people clearly highly intoxicated wandering around, falling down, one guy was out cold lying on the pavement, under the burning sun, on Hollywood Boulevard at 10am. Hollywood was a complete dump, much worse than I remembered, filthy and threatening, Venice Beach was frankly frightening - everyone there looked like a gang member, a pimp, a drug dealer, a drug user or something undesirable - we got out of there asap. But the 'nice' areas like Beverly Hills were clean and tidy and once you got up in the Hollywood Hills the problems of the city faded and it all looked very nice and clean and wealthy and how you would expect. Our friend, who lives there though, confirmed a lot of the problems we'd seen and said things had got MUCH worse over the past 2-5 years - crime, drugs, homelessness, filth, drought, you name it. We were staying in an apartment on a nice wide boulevard with a grassy area in the middle of the road where several homeless people had pitched tents. We were appalled, tbh.