> Rates of homelessness are not correlated with "life choices"

What could this possibly even mean? Someone roles a dice and then somebody materializes on the side of the road with a tent and a shopping cart and a fentanyl addiction?

This person just existed in a choiceless state up until the exact moment where the gained agency and simultaneously became homeless?

It means that poor choices and addiction can’t explain why San Francisco has so much higher homelessness than other places like West Virginia, which has much higher addiction rates.

It certainly does not mean that poor choices and addiction haven't lead to any or even most of the outcomes in SF. It means that the exact combination of dynamics in SF have produced different rates of homelessness than other places.

Nothing more or less.

It does not even come close to justifying the statement

> Rates of homelessness are not correlated with "life choices" or "events" at all

It's not wrong, though. This is just a rephrasing of the same problem. Imagine two people, one with a family that will take them in in an emergency and another with nobody. They both become heroin addicts. The addiction results in a job loss and a few arrests. Soon they've sold all their possessions, their health is declining, and they're behind on rent.

Person A puts their tail between their legs and goes and sleeps in mom's basement.

Person B becomes homeless.

It would be fairly deranged to say that "life choices" and "events" didn't matter "at all," that the second person's homelessness can be entirely explained by the lack of supportive family. It's both things. Homelessness arises when poor choices intersect with a lack of options.

And what happens when your hypothetical "emergency" isn't due to a personal failing?

There are people homeless in the US right now because of medical debt due to illness, is that their fault too?

I don't feel a ton of emotions about phrases like, "personal failing" one way or the other, so it doesn't really make that much difference to me and I'd just say that obviously the illness was a factor. That's what we're talking about here: whether to describe obvious factors as such. It would be equally silly to claim that the illness in that case was not relevant.

Medical debt can be discharged in bankruptcy, there's no reason anyone should become homeless over it.

Have you tried renting with a lack of a credit score or with a tanked score? It is increasingly out of reach.

Lots of people with bad credit scores manage to rent. If this were impossible then a quarter of the population would be homeless.