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1/4 For the past five years, progressive activists have been saying "homelessness is a housing problem." But thanks to some stellar reporting from the LA Times, we can now confirm that addiction and mental illness are the primary drivers of homelessness. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-10-07/homeless-population-mental-illness-disability …
2/4 According to the LA Times analysis, 67% of the homeless population has either a substance abuse disorder or mental illness. For the unsheltered population, 75% suffer from addiction and 78% suffer from mental illness.
3/4 This confirms what I've been reporting for the past two years and, shamefully, our own paper, the Seattle Times, has adamantly refused to address.
4/4 If we want to truly reduce homelessness in our cities, we have to first understand the problem—addiction, mental illness, and the collapse of our social institutions that once held people together.
I'm hoping @seattletimes, @timeshomeless, and @ViannaDavila will consider doing a similar analysis of the raw survey data in King County. It cuts against the entire narrative of the political and nonprofit class which has maintained that it's "all about housing."
I've served on the board of a homeless NGO in TLH for the last several years, and I'm generally in agreement. However, each homeless person has a unique set of circumstances that led to their situation. But, I agree, we have to deal with mental illness/addiction -- it's big.
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