SAN DIEGO — Ask just about anyone for their thoughts on what causes homelessness, and you will likely hear drug addiction, mental illness, alcoholism and poverty.
A pair of researchers, however, looked at those issues across the country and found they occur everywhere. What does vary greatly around the country, they found, was the availability of affordable housing.
In their book "Homelessness is a Housing Problem," University of California Press, co-authors Clayton Page Aldern and Gregg Colburn looked at various contributing issues of homelessness, including mental illness and addiction, and looked at the per capita rate of homelessness around the country. By looking at the rate of homeless per 1,000 people, they found communities with the highest housing costs had some of the highest rates of homelessness, something that might be overlooked when looking at just the overall raw number of homeless people.
