Why does the United States have a homeless population even during good economic conditions?

Homelessness
Name
Institutional affiliate
Homelessness
Research Question: Why does the United States have a homeless population even during good economic conditions?
Thesis Statement: There are social, psychological, and physiological factors characterizing the homeless population in the United States that limit the nation’s efforts to end homelessness even during good economic conditions.
Annotation 1: Scholarly Article 1:
Reference: Hodge, J. G., DiPietro, B., & Horton-Newell, A. E. (2017). Homelessness and the Public’s Health: Legal Responses. The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 45(1), 28-32. https://doi:10.1177/1073110517703314
Annotation
This is a commentary that offers an overview of the public issue of homelessness in the United States, which highlights its correlation with public health issues and the community as a whole while also providing an assessment and evaluation of the existing legal responses to the situation. The authors recognize the fact that homelessness is one of the key challenges facing the nation with adverse effects on public health. Among the measures embraced by the government to address the issue includes the implementation of perceived effective policy and legal interventions towards attaining both short-term and long-term solutions to the problem. The adoption of such interventional measures achieved significant improvements in the efforts to end homelessness in the country. Such improvements in the fight against homelessness in the United States further reflect positively on public health as both issues strongly correlate. However, posit the authors, such initiatives as spearheaded by government agencies such as the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) still fall short of reaching the desired outcome of ending homelessness.
The authors support their position on the issue of homelessness and its effects on public health by analyzing and evaluating the efficacy of the legal responses to the public issue. The authors are quick to recognize the remarkable achievement of the said initiatives with reports from the USICH reflecting significant progress in the efforts to end homelessness across different parameters characterizing the equally distinct manifestations of homelessness in the United States. According to the article, collaborative efforts between the USICH and the local and state administrations have made commendable progress in dealing with the public issue since 2002. The USICH report, for instance, indicates that the initiatives account for a 33% reduction in homelessness among the veterans, a 21% reduction among individuals considered to be chronically homeless, and an impressive 53% reduction in homelessness among the unsheltered families. The authors go-ahead to establish the correlation between homelessness and public health, with the former accounting for significant deterioration of the latter. Homeless individuals, for instance, have a higher prevalence of chronic illness, mental health problems, and social disorderly behaviors such as drugs and substance abuse. The authors also comment on the criminalization of homelessness that exposes victims to biased law enforcement procedures conducted by local and state governme...