I found this article to be very thin on data to support its thesis that: a. there is a homeless crisis in Seattle in particular b. this crisis was caused in p

I found this article to be very thin on data to support its thesis that: a. there is a homeless crisis in Seattle in particular b. this crisis was caused in part by a systematic erosion of infrastructural support for affordable housing and mental health care. For some background, there was a spike in the homeless count in the Seattle-Tacoma area over the last three years (http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/count-of-seattle-king-county-homeless-finds-4505-people-sleeping-outside/ http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/count-of-s...), but I don't know how noisy the data gathering technique is (it sounds like it's super noisy), and I gather that the linked article isn't talking about something that happened over the last three years. I found the reports at http://www.endhomelessness.org http://www.endhomelessness.org (direct link to 2016 report: http://www.endhomelessness.org/page/-/files/2016%20State%20Of%20Homelessness.pdf http://www.endhomelessness.org/page/-/files/2016%20State%20O...) to be very helpful to get a better quantitative view of homelessness. The 2015 report has comparative data by city. Seattle ranked 6th worst in terms of per capita homeless rates, but I haven't found a good Seattle specific breakdown of rates by demographic/cause over time yet. The overall national (USA) trendline for homelessness is negative from 2007-2016. This is not at all to say that there isn't a problem (there is), but I find the narrative of crisis (which implies something coming to a head, reaching a point of no return, etc.) to be counterproductive. We have systematic structural and infrastructural problems in the USA broadly and Seattle, WA in particular that create unjust and inhumane conditions for a significant percentage of the population. We're slowly getting better, but we don't have very good safeguards against regressing, and we're not getting better as quickly as we'd like. That's what a brief foray into the data says (minus the evaluative bits). Is there something that has caused a huge spike in homelessness in Seattle in particular? I don't honestly know. Does it have deep roots in the erosion of public support for homelessness? I don't know that either, but my tiny and imperfect window into the data says "probably not." Also interesting, the Seattle Human Services "Homeless Investment Analysis" from 2015 (http://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/HumanServices/Reports/HomelessInvestmentAnalysis.pdf http://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/HumanServices/R...). TL;DR "we're ramping up spending on the problem but it could be done better and more efficiently."