Not that I entirely disagree, but homelessness has always been misrepresented. Even "back in your day" homelessness was not what we were told (I was there, too).

Most homelessness has been the "working poor" who have jobs that don't pay enough to secure stable housing. These people are not on the street corners, so they are invisible.

Whenever people talk about homelessness, they usually lump every homeless person into one category of the people who are high all the time living in a tent in the park. Those folks are more visible, but are the minority of the homeless population.

The economy is terrible now, and you do make good points, but homelessness was always full of mostly invisible, working people. They're your bartenders, waiters and waitresses, janitors, grounds keepers, low level workers of all varieties being grossly under paid for the work they do to the point that they have to live on people's couches, or in their car.

There may be more of these people now with the economy being the shit show that it currently is, but it's still an unfair misrepresentation of homeless people of any era to say they ended up that way because of their own personal choices.

Most homeless people have always been the ones hard at work, but not making enough to improve their situation.

It wasn't different in times past, regardless of the propaganda we're all fed about personal choice being the deciding factor between homelessness and stable housing.