Your sample is biased. When the US govt and other agencies look at homelessness the causes are not often self-inflicted. For example, homelessness in LA is most

Your sample is biased. When the US govt and other agencies look at homelessness the causes are not often self-inflicted. For example, homelessness in LA is mostly due to the fact that jobs that could pay for someone to live there are relatively scarce (basically, cost of living is nuts in larger cities like LA, Chicago, NY, and etc). Add to the fact that state governments rarely if ever properly fund housing assistance in the US this makes it much worse in areas where even the cost of living is relatively low (like in rural parts of the US). So that's how we got so many homeless. It's not because of some lifestyle choice, it's simple economics and oddly one that can be solved with a minimum of fuss.