This article seems to suggest that giving out access to housing is in fact effective:
https://www.vox.com/2014/5/30/5764096/homeless-shelter-housi...
Vox doesn't have data either. They are stating that government spends money very inefficiently at homeless and assumes it would be more efficient to hand out homes. This is wrong because:
* government will hand out homes also very inefficiently
* handing out homes might be cheaper than policing homeless people, but it does not guarantee that it fixes homeless problem for reasons I described and for other reasons (like some people might consider declaring themselves homeless to get free apartments)
I'm not saying Vox is wrong, I'm just saying that Vox is correctly writing about different aspect of the issue, but does not explain how to solve homelessness.
This is my surprised face lol.