> The homeless problem is mostly attributable to laws in the 70s and 80s which released mentally ill patients from hospitals and prevented their future incarcer

> The homeless problem is mostly attributable to laws in the 70s and 80s which released mentally ill patients from hospitals and prevented their future incarceration. This is an over-simplification of homelessness that doesn't bear much scrutiny. Many people develop mental ill-health after, not before, becoming homeless. Many people are homeless without "severe mental illness" (schizophrenia, bipolar). https://www.bbrfoundation.org/blog/homelessness-and-mental-illness-challenge-our-society https://www.bbrfoundation.org/blog/homelessness-and-mental-i... > According to a 2015 assessment by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 564,708 people were homeless on a given night in the United States. At a minimum, 140,000 or 25 percent of these people were seriously mentally ill, and 250,000 or 45 percent had any mental illness. By comparison, a 2016 study found that 4.2 percent of U.S. adults have been diagnosed with a serious mental illness. Looking at the common disorders we can see the causal direction could easily be "the misery of homelessness causes the mental disorder". > Affective disorders such as depression and bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, anxiety disorders and substance abuse disorders are among the most common types of mental illness in the homeless population.