> what does that even mean (like they only abuse alcohol?)?

Only about 35% of the homeless population has an addiction. Less than half of the homeless population neither has an addiction nor a mental illness. [1] Just because there is lots of substance abuse (and yes, there certainly is), doesn't mean that the average homeless person does drugs. When you talk about the homeless population, you have to include people who are really quite like you but had a bad turn. Many of them have a story like "I got a mortgage with a large down payment just before 2008, when I lost my job and then shortly my house. I had to go to the streets because I had nowhere else to go."

[1]: https://sunrisehouse.com/addiction-demographics/homeless-pop...

There's ambiguity between the formal classification of homelessness as used by the city and organizations, and other connotations such as the street homeless. People across the spectrum seem to abuse this and similar terminological ambiguity to suit their particular argument or rhetorical point.

There's also the fact that self-reporting regarding things like previous residence, drug use, etc is unreliable. I've always found it odd that some people on HN are so credulous of these numbers even though in other contexts they'd be the first to point out that self-reported data makes bad science.

This doesn't mean the numbers are wrong, just that we should have very large error bars which grow as we make inferences. If we combine ambiguity regarding homelessness with an already substantial number like 35%, and tack on issues like mental illness, it's hardly a stretch to say that drug use and mental illness are the principle problems for the seeming intractability of street homeless reduction.

I am extremely skeptical of the 35% number.

>>Less than half of the homeless population neither has an addiction nor a mental illness.

Above quote implies close to half. I just find it hard to believe.

If a person is otherwise "functional" (or as you say "like you") I would really want to know more about their situation if their time on the street is longer than one month.

For contrast id like to point out that in the cases of migrant caravans comprised of THOUSANDS (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/10/20/migrant...) of people and families. Caravan migrants are so poor they cant afford a bus/train ticket. As far as i know most of those people do not WALK to the US to sleep on the streets. As far as i know they are able to find housing.

Just to recap people with almost no education/English/money and minimal social network DO NOT endup on the streets of major cities in their thousands.

I make a point of this - because for this problem to get resolved we have to think critically about what the problem actually is.

And to be super clear - we absolutely need a better safety net for people who fell on hard times and could no longer keep their previously expensive home.

But also we need to be clear about the causes of homelessness we see in major US cities.

I was homeless for 9 month in Paris (until i got my first internship), i did not live on the street, i slept at my school or took friends beds when they were out of town, and i think most homeless do the same. And i was not alone, i think we were ~20 to do the out of 400 students. None of us had addiction (i can't tell about mental issue, after all we wanted to be devs).

I went to San Francisco 3 years ago with my familly and my sister made some homeless friends. They were not living in the street but in their cars, they had low-pay (or illegal) jobs and did not seems to have any addictions.

I think this is a definition issue. Homeless just mean you don't have a home.