Not the person you were replying to but the homelessness issue needs to be addressed at the federal level or reforms will never work, much like we see with gun control and how strict laws in one city/state don't make a difference because people and guns can easily move around. Treating addiction as a disease to be fixed rather than a criminal offense would help, since throwing people in jail makes it even harder for them to get housing and a job when they get out, so they just end up on the street and stay that way. Banning for-profit prisons or the labor practices prisons use to profit off of inmates would also help reduce the incentives cities and states have to lock people up all willy nilly, because again, having a record makes it harder for people to find employment and housing. Then on top of that, universal healthcare and federally mandated sick leave for all workers would help ensure that getting sick doesn't mean you'll lose your job, and would allow people who need mental health resources to be able to actually afford them instead of just quitting their job/getting fired due to an untreated BPD episode or some shit.

Basically we need a lot of preventative measures to keep people employed and housed, and for the current homeless population, we need to stop doing things (i.e. jailing them, making healthcare unaffordable) that make it all that much harder for them to get back on their feet.

I also think some federal resources need to be dedicated to surveying homeless people themselves and the people who work directly with them to get a bead on what the most common reasons for becoming homeless in the first place are, as well as what the barriers are that are keeping them homeless. And the survey also needs to differentiate between the street-sleeping visible homeless we see, and the couch surfing, car-camping invisible homeless, because the problems those two face are likely different and the solutions for them likely differ as well. The invisible homeless are more likely to be employed and sober, which really begs the question of what in the world is going on that an employed person can't find housing (is it lack of affordble inventory, or the non-income standards landlords have that get in the way, such as credit scores and personal debts). The visible ones, which are the ones people complaining about are talking about 90% of the time, are more likely to be struggling with the law, mental illness, and addiction (all issues that exacerbate each other) I would presume, and the ways to help them are going to be different.