alt Hacker News> Homelessness on the other hand is mostly a mental health and drug addiction problem
No it's not. It's not a coincidence that homelessness only skyrocketed at the same time housing price took off to the point even professionals are spending half of their salary on rent. And if you look at the statistics you'll see addiction is a widespread issue but homelessness is not — WV and NM has some of the worst overdose deaths and the least homelessness.
Please for god's sake let's address the elephant in the room for a second. It's the housing prices.
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sscaryterry • yesterday at 11:02 PM
Exactly, I'd imagine that if I were homeless, I'd probably do drugs just to not have to deal with my unimaginable circumstances.
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> It's not a coincidence that homelessness only skyrocketed at the same time housing price took off to the point even professionals are spending half of their salary on rent.
But this is also highly correlated with a skyrocketing opioid epidemic. How are you disambiguating those variables? I suspect you've decided what you believe is the cause and you're working backwards from that instead of earnestly interrogating the causes.
It's likely these are both factors, and there are more contributing to homelessness. One of the largest contributors was de-institutionalisation. Turning out mentally unwell people into the streets was clearly a terrible social strategy.
We have research on this, so there's no need to retread. [For example.](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29153445/)
> Prevalence rates were similar across rural and nonrural counties. Higher risk of homelessness was observed among young parents; black, Hispanic, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) youth; and those who did not complete high school.
Youth homelessness rates were similar in cheap and expensive areas. However, factors such as race, sexual orientation, and educational attainment appeared correlated.