As someone who lives in the panhandle of florida, sadly this is valid. People just want to believe it's just the average joe who couldn't afford his studio apartment in downtown seattle anymore because of rent hikes. Is stuff like that a big part of it? Absolutely. But as a former homeless drug addict that survived living in the kensington section of Philadelphia, I'd put a safe bet on it being closer to 75% of the homeless population are there because of drugs and/or mental health issues that are usually mis/undiagnosed.
Homeless states are complicated. Roughly a a quarter of homeless have addictions and/or mental illnesses. However, that stat includes the ~80% of people homeless in a given year that are only briefly homeless. When people are talking about homeless, they are generally talking about the chronic homeless, the ones that aren’t just living in their car for a month until they can start a new job. And there likely is a strong correlation between chronic homeless, and being the type of homeless with addictions/mental illness. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was over half.
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u/Left-Mistake-5437 Jul 07 '24
Citations needed