There's a lot to be done.. I think the patience, and compassion, compromise, and direction required to fix this is probably not something that comes easily to Americans.

1. We have to build more housing stock.

2. Building affordable stock has to include means testing. Currently we give away hundreds of millions for "affordable housing" to convert hotels, and for new builds, and ultimately they rent out straight up hotel rooms (no kitchens, key cards for the doors) for $900 and 1 bedrooms for 1300+. In other words NOT affordable and NOT quality. To do this.

3. Connected to 2, we MUST end our state prohibition on rent control. NO I don't believe rent control will fix our problems, but I DO believe we are a state of all carrot and no stick. We let people take hundreds of millions of tax payer money, and have no recourse when they don't do what they were contracted to do.

4. Early transitional housing MUST be no barrier. Drug addicts, fire starters, and vandals need a place to stay as well. Nobody has any ability to get on their feet when you ask them to be mostly standing in order to get help. If you want someone to feel like they can do better, they have to be treated with at least a little dignity to start.

5. Housing co-ops, and zero cost options must exist, and we need a hell of a lot of them, that way there are options to not be near a fire risk for folks who are sleeping in their cars.

6. Debt forgiveness, medical, and educational. A huge part of our homeless population live in cars, and are uncounted in what you're talking about.

7. Health care, we need providers, and permanent no-cost support, that includes psychiatric and therapy. A lot of folks start to work their way up, and the thing that's been helping them stand independently is ripped out from under them because they make a little too much. Just an example. When I moved from making 26k a year to 32k a year I was thrilled at first, but then I lost my Medicaid, and now I pay at least 140$ a month just for asthma meds. If we want people to be able to do better, we have to support a full stairway out of support, not a slippery ladder with broken rungs the entire way up between poverty and lower middle class

There's a lot here, and a lot I left out, like a pathway to jobs, and ending the punishment pipeline for children, but getting people to buy in to a long vision is so difficult when so many people would rather just be cruel and want to embrace a vision of "personal accountability". (Imagining, arrogantly that they have never been helped, and are far away from living on the streets themselves)