That's a quote from page 11 of the Council of Economic Advisors' 2019 report on "The State of Homelessness in America."
There are "maximum-density allowances" for a reason.
"Energy and water efficiency mandates" are probably what kept my utility bills low enough for me to pay them all year without financial assistance in my last apartment, so to say they are a cause of homelessness seems inaccurate to me.
I have never lived in a rent-controlled apartment, but I am unsure as to why eliminating rent control where it still prevents landlords from evicting tenants would be helpful.
I'm in the process of reading the report, and am getting an unpleasant feeling also about what it has to say about homeless shelters. The main problem with homeless shelters is that they are badly administered and have a lot of stupid, lazy people working at them. Homeless shelters don't cause homelessness, which is sort've how the report is reading to me so far.
Most homeless people hate being homeless and hate living in homeless shelters. Nobody needs to defund homeless shelters or try to make them more miserable places than they already are. What most people living in shelters feel all the time is devastating despair about ever getting out. You're not thinking "I like it here." You're thinking "I don't know how I'm ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever going to get out of here. This is the most hopeless place I have ever been in my life." That is how homeless shelters make people feel; never believe their public relations lies. Homeless shelters need to be modernized; they do not need to be defunded.
Having known a lot of homeless people, I can say without reservation that the first root cause of homelessness is a public education system that has never had the funding or standards that it needs to ensure an educated, self-sufficient public. After that are the inadequacies of the mental health care system and the correctional system, which also need major reform. After that are drugs and alcohol. People who know how to live happier lives don't tend to turn to drugs and alcohol as much as people who don't. By the way, alcoholism seems to be as much a factor in homelessness as ever. That shouldn't be forgotten in the midst of discussions of opioids.
All of the above is not to mention sexual and domestic violence both in childhood and adulthood, which are underlying causes of trauma from which people frequently don't recover because the systems I have just mentioned are so bad.
Loss and grief are also frequent precipitating factors in spirals toward homelessness. The primary losses that people can't cope with are of children, parents and life partners. Nobody thinks of homeless people as being sad; as far as society is concerned, we're all just mentally ill. Loss and grief counseling should be a priority in every homeless shelter and other homeless setting, and it never is.
As far as what to do with or for the half-million Americans who are already homeless; I already talked about that a little bit earlier today. Why don't you ask them, one at a time? Most people know what happened to them, and what would help. You'd be surprised at how listening and doing what they ask would yield positive results. Anyone who has never been homeless (and nobody who has) would also be surprised at how few good listeners and helpers the systems which are supposed to listen and help really have.
