Homeless situation....
Not sure if it was answered yet, but estimates are around 25% of the country's homeless are seriously mentally ill, and about 45% have some mental illness. Granted, plenty of poeple in the work force have some low level mental illness. (about 4.2% of all adults have a mental illness)
now, it could be a bit of a chicken or the egg thing. Becoming homeless can make a mental illness worse, or PTSD can be developed.
FWIW this is an old but I think still valid piece from PBS from 1995 about the effects of deinstitutionalization of mental health in the 60s-70s that I mentioned in an earlier post. Basically there are probably around 1 million people in the community today that would have been hospitalized on a more or less permanent basis 50 years ago. I think a large segment of that number make up the homeless population. Another large segment are in jail, which this piece describes in detail.
The law of unintended consequences is pretty much undefeated.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/asylums/special/excerpt.html
There are certainly a lot of working poor among the homeless (especially in places like SF where a 1 BR studio is $4000/month) but there are also a lot of mentally ill that are not going to get much more integrated into society even with a free apartment.
Not sure if it was answered yet, but estimates are around 25% of the country's homeless are seriously mentally ill, and about 45% have some mental illness. Granted, plenty of poeple in the work force have some low level mental illness. (about 4.2% of all adults have a mental illness)
now, it could be a bit of a chicken or the egg thing. Becoming homeless can make a mental illness worse, or PTSD can be developed.