[ahelwer]

There is no strong separation between 3/4 of your categories. People freely move from financial misfortune to mental illness to drug abuse. I'm sure you have the empathy to imagine the toll being homeless takes on your mental health, and in turn the difficulty with holding down stable employment when you have mental health problems. Drug addiction is of course a mental health issue, not something to be moralized - it's long past time to leave the war on drugs mindset in the past. So developing a drug addiction is a similarly high risk factor for the unhoused. Then you're really screwed. Thinking people with severe drug addictions are living in "paradise" in SF is extremely out-of-touch.

All of this is a cycle, of course. Drug addiction will lead to financial misfortune, as will mental health issues.

The solution to homelessness is to build free socialized housing, lots of it, with integrated mental health treatment.