Oh absolutely. There are a lot of variables in play here, it just seems that there are a lot of complaints that “nobody wants to be homeless” without understanding that , yes, nobody wants to be homeless, but QUITE A FEW people either WANT to or HAVE to (because medically, addiction is a medical condition) use drugs. And there’s not a really good set of solutions for that because the programs and systems that got a lot of these people hooked (a huge number are former oxy addicts who , after the legal oxy got shut down, turned to meth and heroin) were well funded government condoned operations, and the systems and programs to get them unhooked are poorly funded and run almost mostly by volunteers. So yeah. I’d say a vast majority of homeless here in portland don’t want to be homeless and are trying, a small percentage don’t but are held in the throes of addiction and the cycle of things that leads to here , and a much much much smaller percentage have no interest in ever getting any help whatsoever.
But I would also say that nobody in all those groups CHOSE to be homeless.
