Contrary to expectations, rates of homelessness tend to be lower where poverty rates are higher.
Contrary to whose expectations?
A quick comparison of income/GDP and homelessness suggests that higher incomes push up the rate of unhoused people…why, it’s almost as if housing (ie, land) prices chase wages, and those whose wages don’t rise so fast are forced out of whatever housing they could afford.
Is it a perfect correlation? No, there are other factors but the assertion that homelessness is tied to poverty rates, rather than inequality or a widening gulf between rich and poor, makes me wonder how much the authors want to understand the problem. But then I am reminded of Upton Sinclair’s dictum that “[I]t is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Housing as a market good rewards speculation. Recapturing the value of land to fund and build social housing, through outright public ownership of land or a tax that recoups the dividends of public productivity, can curb it.
Homelessnessness isn’t a housing problem: it’s a land problem. There is no affordable housing without affordable land. Seems like it wouldn’t take a PhD to get that. Maybe having one makes it harder to see the obvious.