A famous study in World War II looked at planes that survived and saw where the planes had taken damage. Then they assumed that they needed to strengthen these parts of the plane, but in fact it was the opposite: It was the planes that didn't survive that needed work, not the planes that survived. Similarly, in homelessness, we see lots of addiction, lots of mental health problems and lots of poverty, but we're not actually seeing all the people who didn't become homeless.
If you look at serious addiction in Canada, you see that it is probably at 16%, while 1% of the population is homeless at any given time. If addiction were a major driver of homelessness, we would expect to see a lot more homeless people, but we're not. Why? That's the question.
The answer is what I call the “unifying theory of homelessness”. People are homeless because of an inability to leverage a social relationship for housing. Why are people with serious addictions not flooding our streets? It's because they have family and friends who go out of their way to make sure these people are housed.
The people we see on the streets are there because, for some reason, they have not been able to access those supports. Our work is to recognize that and see how we can support people in bettering their relationships and then allow the system—the natural system, not the for-profit, paid system—to support people through housing.