You are exaggerating. I live in Westwood, have lived in the area for 15 years. Also spent quite a bit of time in SF.
There is absolutely no comparison between the two places. Even in Westwood Village you could go months without being hit up by a homeless person for change. Now, maybe you were in a hot spot where a few hang out regularly, but they are not everywhere by any stretch of the imagination. They're also nothing like the aggressive homeless population in SF. The police here are very quick to crackdown on any kind of aggressiveness.
If you lived in rural Idaho I could see how you might think Westwood had a lot of homeless people -- anyone from SF would think there were none.
I said that there were less and I would agree the ones in SF are more aggressive. I fail to see why there needs to be a distinction between 20 homeless on a block and 10. If you have 10 homeless living in your block, you have a problem.
I agree about West LA completely, but I feel people are missing the bigger story about LA's homeless problems: skid row. I volunteered at a soup kitchen there for a few months several years ago, and it was as bad as the worst I've seen in SF, except more concentrated, with less normality in the immediate vicinity. This means there's less harassment, but perhaps even more complete, down and out, blatant drug use and prostitution.
There is absolutely no comparison between the two places. Even in Westwood Village you could go months without being hit up by a homeless person for change. Now, maybe you were in a hot spot where a few hang out regularly, but they are not everywhere by any stretch of the imagination. They're also nothing like the aggressive homeless population in SF. The police here are very quick to crackdown on any kind of aggressiveness.
If you lived in rural Idaho I could see how you might think Westwood had a lot of homeless people -- anyone from SF would think there were none.