Mental health and substance abuse issues don't spontaneously emerge on their own. Lack of money, housing, personal life, etc. are huge contributing causes.
Mental health / substance can cause homelessness. Homelessness can cause mental health / substance. It’s a shit cycle either way, but the one certainty is we are not addressing either in a meaningful way.
Claiming there are no fundamental material/economic problems, such as with housing, and pretending homeless people are just a lost cause of mentally ill substance abusers is certainly not going to solve any problems, except maybe putting your conscience at ease. Housing is not the only problem, but there are fundamental material issues which greatly increase the chance of mental illness and substance abuse.
I agree with that very much. It's hard not to think this is a byproduct of global corporate capitalism and all these other problems stem from that.