It seems clear that lower rent/housing prices would help with homelessness but I don't think it would help street people.
- sheltered vs. unsheltered homelessness
- chronic homelessness, where "chronic" is defined as a person with a disability who is "continuously homeless for one year or more, or has experienced at least four episodes of homelessness in the last three years where the combined length of time homeless on those occasions is at least 12 months."
- individuals ("households that were not composed of both adults and children") and families
As of mid-December, the US point-in-time counts of those were:[1]
233,832 total unsheltered homeless
348,630 total sheltered homeless
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216,495 unsheltered individuals
204,897 sheltered individuals
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78,615 unsheltered chronically homeless individuals
49,153 sheltered chronically homeless individuals
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More than half of all counted unsheltered chronically homeless individuals in the United States in December were in California (44,120 of 78,615; 56% of total unsheltered chronically homeless, 7.6% of total US homeless).
1: https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/2022-...
> Among the 44,197 homeless shelter stays, on average, a homeless shelter stay was about 77 days, with the median 30 days, and the maximum of 5,030 days (the entry date started in 2002 for this extreme case). ... 2,872 (∼6.5%) homeless shelter stays were just 1 day long, 6,726 homeless shelter stays (∼15%) were between 2 days and 5 days, and 34,695 homeless shelter stays (78.5%) were 10 days or longer. About 81% of all homeless shelter stays were by clients who have experienced recidivism.