It's certainly an element, but that's largely washing your hands and victim blaming. There's a direct correlation between housing costs and homelessness rates.
From the reporting I’ve seen, the vast majority of folks on Skid Row or on the street in SF are heavy addicts. And they refuse shelters because then they couldn’t use.
From a census of homeless people in LA county a few years back[1]:
15% of LA's homeless population has substance abuse problems. Only 12% of these people are in shelters.
25% have serious mental illnesses. 20% of these people are in shelters.
Overall 33% of homeless people are in shelters.
So you are partially right that drug use and mental health issues can make sheltering some people more difficult. But you are very wrong that people with either of these issues make up a majority of all homeless people. It is just classic confirmation bias in that people with these issues are the most visibly homeless. The people who are living in their car or a shelter and simply can't afford a home aren't easily identifiable as homeless when you walk past them on the street. This can also be seen in the previously linked data as only 28% of LA's homeless population qualifies as chronically homeless.
Basically you are only able to see a small portion of the problem and are assuming that is the whole problem when in actuality homelessness is roughly 4x worse.
2. Therefore, the homelessness is caused by drug addiction.
Not exactly sound reasoning. Plenty of people with mental illness and drug addiction still manage to pay rent.
No one disputes the rates of addiction and mental illness among the homeless. California has neither the highest rates for drug addiction/overdoses nor the highest rates of mental illness, yet it has the highest rate of homelessness.
There is no correlation between rates of mental illness and rates of homelessness. There is no correlation between drug addiction rates and homelessness. There is a strong Correlation between rents and homelessness.
Why? Being mentally ill and a drug addict doesn't automatically make you homeless in an area where rent for a room is $400/month.
> Dry shelters are arguably a massive part of the problem.
As someone who has housed and lived close to addicts, to put it plainly: this is a naive, academic view. Dry shelter are "a massive part of the problem"? Absolutely incorrect, and harmfully ignorant if implemented at societal scale.
As someone who provided food and shelter to an addict in my own home, guaranteeing these things does nothing to increase the willingness to quit heroin. Material deprivation may cause you to seek drugs, but remedying deprivation does not lead to recovery. In fact, I honestly believe offering it unconditionally hampers it.
If your understanding of the scientific evidence is that it supports "dry shelters are harmful and their existence exacerbates heroin addiction," then I think that's a good argument in favor of the inclusion of anecdotes on this topic.
If your understanding of the scientific method and critical inquiry amounts to "if you have some belief I don't like then anecdotes are useful" then you need to level up your understanding of the scientific method and critical inquiry.
>Cities also have higher costs of living because they are densely populated
Isn't population density supposed to introduce efficiencies that would lead to lowering costs? I think, that's the usual argument against suburban sprawl.
From the reporting I’ve seen, the vast majority of folks on Skid Row or on the street in SF are heavy addicts. And they refuse shelters because then they couldn’t use.
How does more housing help them?