It's tempting to see homelessness as an individual problem, but cost of housing is a much stronger correlation than addiction/mental illness.
Well, barring Miami, maybe.
Cities with high housing costs also tend to have more funding behind social programs that can enable homelessness (Seattle, Portland, SF). Also, circuit court jurisdictions governing how localities can manage a homeless population may account for some difference (9th vs 11th, in this case).
Hasn't crime risen more sharply in the west coast cities? If so, is it simplistic to say that homelessness leads to crime? I think the mental health issues are a stronger correlation: without the meth induced psychosis being added to homelessness, you wouldn't have nearly as much crime.
Sadly, I've come to the conclusion that forced incarceration is necessary for a certain small group of people on the streets. A guy I used to know in Portland owned a club in the east side, and said there was a homeless man throwing railroad ties into the windows. Then, he murdered his girlfriend and burned himself alive in his tent. Completely anecdotal but I can't forget it. If we really cared about people on the street, we should have figured out a way to get him off the street.
But, that note in the article about data driven solutions showing that incarceration is not effective makes me pause, and I'll go read that now that I've sprouted off misinformation.
However, this doesn't explain why some cities have way more homelessness than others. It's not like there's way more insane people in Portland than other cities. Take a look at the third chart on this page- https://www.sightline.org/2022/03/16/homelessness-is-a-housi...
You can also look at places like West Virginia, or Balitmore, which have high rates of crime/addiction but low rates of homelessness- housing is cheap over there.
Baltimore is very high crime and as such inexpensive and as such low levels of homelessness.
/s