Addiction doesn't automatically mean you'll end up homeless but drug addiction is pretty rampant within the homeless population compared to the rest of the population.

Go talk to some homeless people. Do you really think if rent was 500 instead of 1000 most of them would not be homeless? A few maybe, but that ignores the fact that mentally ill vet or the drug addict whether he has to pay 500 or 1000 for rent makes no difference.

You work in the industry so not sure why you're lying, what I'm talking about is hardly anectodal.



https://www.bbrfoundation.org/blog/homelessness-and-mental-illness-challenge-our-society#:~:text=According%20to%20a%202015%20assessment,percent%20had%20any%20mental%20illness.



https://www.samhsa.gov/sites/default/files/programs_campaigns/homelessness_programs_resources/hrc-factsheet-current-statistics-prevalence-characteristics-homelessness.pdf

That actually goes strongly against your position IMO. 25% has serious mental illness, and less than half had any mental illness at all. Less than a third of chronically homeless have mental illness, and less than half have substance abuse.

Seems like affordable housing would get over half of those people off the streets. Reduce rent from 1000 a month to 500 a month and you've probably got a lot of people who never went on the streets to begin with and remained in a semi-stable housing situation.

You're also assuming he's lieing, when the better assumption would be he has access to more and better data than you do since he's a professional with far more experience. Don't assume dishonesty when talking to professionals on their subject of expertise. That's a toxic way to approach things and is super pervasive in conservative circles.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Apr 9 2021 10:31am

5% of the US population has a serious mental illness. In comparison the homeless pop that percentage is 25%. So the homeless population has 5 times the rate. Furthermore, 45% of homeless have some form of mental illness as per the sources.

I know he's lying because he works with mentally ill people. Depending on the condition if most of those people get released into the open world, many of them will end up on the streets regardless if rent is 500 or 1000 because when you can't hold a job that 500 might as well be 5 million, both unachievable.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Apr 9 2021 10:41am

Dude, not everybody with serious mental illness can't hold down a job. Not everybody with a drug problem can't hold down a job. Not everybody with a mild mental illness can't hold down a job. Even if we assume that every single person with serious mental illness is in a situation where they can't hold down a job, that still leaves 75% of the homeless population unaccounted for.

You are assuming he is lieing because you disagree with him and totally disregarding that he might have exposure and understanding that you lack. It's a toxic way to handle conversation with people who definitely know more than you on the subject.



This post was edited by Thor123422 on Apr 9 2021 10:45am

Not to pile on here, but while mental illness and drug/alcohol abuse is higher than the average among the homeless, many studies have shown that the abuse comes after the homelessness for a large portion of the abusers. AKA, you have the correlation backwards, and can't prove causation at all.

Homelessness is often tied very simply to housing cost, which is also why homelessness is so much more prevalent in cities than it is in rural areas. In rural areas, a person can simply buy a cheap plot of land and live in a camper. Such conditions, while considered "substandard" are not considered homeless. Even a "cheap" plot of land to park your camper will cost you as much as a home, and half the cost of rent if you don't "own", and require a lot of the same amenities as for an actual house, driving costs up above what you may actually make, assuming you want to eat.

There are a huge number of variances and problems when it comes to homelessness. But simply boiling it down to saying "They're mentally ill drug abusers" is both dishonest and deceptive, as well as inaccurate.

"Being bad with money" is not the primary cause either, don't get me wrong, though it's also a major contributing factor. Again, it's not such a simple issue. And there are plenty of people that simply prefer it. For whatever reason, they like going where they go, sleeping where they sleep, and simply not caring what other people do.

You're doing math wrong.

25% have a serious mental illness, 50% have substance abuse. That doesn't somehow equate to 75% being unaccounted for.

Those two are not mutually exclusive and I won't venture to guess but it's clear from a statistical perspective that those two issues alone are extremely prevalent within the homeless community and just simply providing cheaper housing wouldn't do a thing. It's a square peg in a round hole type of a solution.

I can use google and I can understand basic statistics, he doesn't have a monopoly on knowledge just because he works in the field.



IMO I don't think the rural vs city is quiet accurate. Homeless people will come to places where they can find some sort of help & resources. They can scrounge a few bucks together from begging or collecting cans in a city versus in the middle of Iowa. IMO it's more of a function of walkability & resource availability. Like in my city most of the homeless people are either downtown or very close to downtown.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Apr 9 2021 10:59am

Substance abuse does not equate to not being able to hold down a job.

Mental illness does not equate to not being able to hold down a job.

Even if we assume the 50% of people who have mental illness can't hold down a job, which is a wildly insulting and unrealistic assumption, then you've got over half the people unaccounted for.

Even if we assume that there is no overlap between the substance abusers and mental illness, and both of those mean you can't hold down a job, again a ridiculous assumption since there's almost certainly a massive overlap, you've got a full 25% unaccounted for.

In reality, the number of people who "can't hold down a job" is likely a less-than-majority portion of the 25% of seriously mentally ill, and an even smaller portion of the substance abusers, and there's probably near total overlap between those groups.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Apr 9 2021 10:59am

Ugh you're such an idiot sometimes.

Remind me to put forth no effort in replying to you anymore. It's really such a waste of time.

But it be clear: lying to you is beneath me. I'm writing you off completely now.

Bye, felicia.

This post was edited by Skinned on Apr 9 2021 11:16am

My point is not to account for all the variables that end up in a person being homeless nor did I imply that simply having a drug problem or mental illness means that you will end up homeless.

But if we were to do a regression equation with homelessness being my dependent variable, i'd put money that drug abuse +mental issues are a greater impact than shelter prices.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Apr 9 2021 11:08am

So you're using a regression you haven't done based on data you got in a few minutes on Google to discount the opinion of somebody with tens of thousands of hours of experience and tens of thousands of patient interactions and who's education equipped him to deal with this specific issue.

Ive pointed out many times, but this is just a perfect example. You only know enough statistics to be dangerous. You know how to use the tools but not enough to know why to use them or when to use them. Statistics without the real world circumstances of the data collection is less than useless.