No Fixed Address · Episode 1 of 11 · 42 min
Homelessness in America: Is It Housing or Mental Illness?
The series opens with a 1981 courtroom scene and the question behind it: how much of American homelessness is a health problem and how much a housing problem. The episode defines the vocabulary and scale, from the record 771,480 counted in 2024 to the first national decline in 2025, and sets up the puzzle that housing cost sets the scale while illness shapes who falls.
Who's who
- Gregg Colburn+2 more episodesHousing scholar whose thesis is that housing sets the scale and health decides who falls
- Clayton Page Aldern+2 more episodesData scientist and co-author of Homelessness Is a Housing Problem
Where it happens
- San Jose, California+3 more episodesSetting of the opening courtroom scene about a gravely ill man
- I-280 bridge, San Jose, CaliforniaWhere the man said he lived
Timeline
- 1965California signs the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act, creating the gravely disabled standard and the 72-hour hold
- 1981A judge denies an extended psychiatric hold on a gravely ill man living under a freeway bridge
- 2007HUD begins its standardized annual Point-in-Time count
- January 2024The count records 771,480 homeless people, an 18% jump and a record
- January 2025The count falls about 3.3% to 745,652, the first national decrease since 2016
Still debated
Terms like homeless and unhoused are disputed even among people with lived experience, and the Point-in-Time count almost certainly undercounts. Whether the 2025 dip is a turnaround or a blip is open, as is how far housing versus health should drive policy.