Better social safety nets are also required. I have heard that it isn't uncommon for someone who's on the street to have mental health issues which are untreated by society. In the US this seems to have been the result of replacing one hell for the unfortunate (abusive mental 'health' jails) with an even greater hell of apathy (nothing at all).
My ex worked with homeless people and was frustrated that so little could be done for them. One of the biggest obstacles was outright refusal to seek or accept any form of mental health care, even though many programs exist for them.
There is a pervasive fear of being locked up in a psych ward, and those who do get medicine (via Medicaid or other assistance programs) stop taking it, because treatments for severe issues usually have very unpleasant side effects. It can take weeks of trial and error to find something that works, and all that time you are somewhere between a zombie and (as it was described to me) like going through pregnancy without the baby.
You either force people into care, or accept that many will scratch out a living on charity and trash without getting mental care. There isn't a middle ground between forcing and not forcing people to change.
If an individual is unwilling to accept involuntary medication, there are not many/any choices of programs.
In my opinion there is a distinct lack of mental health treatment options that treat patients with dignity. Those that have existed or still exist generally struggle to get funding.
If such programs do exist, I was unable to find any after weeks spent frantically searching for options for my medication resistant schizoaffective friend.
"Many programs exist for them" is also basically bullshit on the face of it. When I was homeless, I didn't have the right issues to qualify for a lot of the programs supposedly aimed at me.
I was homeless with my adult special-needs sons and none us were drunks or addicts. There were programs for homeless single moms with minors but none for homeless single moms still responsible for adult children who couldn't care for themselves. There are programs for addicts and alcoholics but not for people who are homeless because of their medical situation.
Etc.
It's a fiction that "there are lots of programs for you and you just don't wanna get better." And even people who aren't homeless find mental health issues hard to resolve. That's not remotely some kind of solved problem.
Was very close to being on the street when I finally got a correct diagnosis. Got treatment, and my mind cleared up. It wasn’t a mental condition, but every doctor wanted to treat it that way.
This was with great insurance and lots of money. Doctors just don’t like complex cases.
