Rethinking Homelessness: Why Housing — Not Just Hardship, Is the Root Cause

When Gregg Colburn arrived in Seattle in 2017, he quickly noticed a troubling pattern — everyone agreed homelessness was a crisis, but no one could agree on why it was happening.

That disconnect inspired Colburn, an associate professor of real estate at the University of Washington, to take a deeper look. The result is Homelessness is a Housing Problem, a book that reframes the issue through the lens of structural inequality and housing access — challenging long-held beliefs about what’s truly driving the crisis.

Earlier this year, the Indianapolis Foundation (IF) invited Colburn to share insights from his research. He spoke to a group of about 50 people during a presentation that highlighted housing equity — one of the four priorities of IF’s Equity Imperative 2030 strategic plan.

Based on Indianapolis’ 2024 PIT count, a single-night snapshot of homelessness, 1,701 people were experiencing homelessness, either in emergency housing or unsheltered. That marked a 5 percent increase from the previous year, according to the Coalition for Homelessness Intervention and Prevention.

As part of his extensive research, Colburn dived deep into the root causes of homelessness, and much of that insight stemmed from his own experiences in Seattle.

“After I arrived, I was invited to a number of community discussions on homelessness,” Colburn recalled.

The disconnect on why the major city was facing a homelessness crisis sparked his curiosity. Colburn realized the confusion stemmed from what he calls a "unit of analysis problem."

When we look at homelessness through an individual lens, issues like mental illness, poverty, and addiction often take center stage, he said. But when we zoom out to a community-wide perspective, a different picture emerges—one where structural factors, especially the availability and affordability of housing, play a far more significant role.

“The problem is when you change your unit of analysis and go to the community, those are not the drivers of homelessness at a community level,” he said. “It’s because of structural factors like the housing market.”

Colburn emphasized how various housing market factors — including high rents and low vacancies — drive homelessness at a community level.

“If you have high rents and low vacancies in your city, you’re going to have a problem with homelessness,” he said. ““Low vacancies drive higher rents.”

He pointed to cities like Cleveland, Detroit, and St. Louis as examples of that reality. Although they have high rates of poverty, those cities have far lower rates of homelessness than wealthier cities, Colburn said. The same can be said of cities with high rates of drug addiction or mental illness. Those factors don’t necessarily equate to high rates of homelessness, he added.

“At a community level, homelessness thrives amidst affluence,” Colburn said.

“As communities grow and prosper, we need to make sure we are not leaving people behind.”

Same Problems, Different Cities

Another indicator of the complexities of homelessness lies in the differences between states with high rates of drug addictions, Colburn said.

“There are people using drugs in every state in the nation,” he pointed out. “You'll see that states with really, really high rates of drug use disorders are not the states with really, really high rates of homelessness. You'll see that my state and your state have the same level of drug use. But we have radically different experiences with homelessness.”

He also stressed that the causation can go in the opposition direction as well.

“When someone is left on the streets for a year or two — exposed to the elements, vulnerable to physical or sexual assault, without proper food, sleep, or medical care — it’s no surprise that they eventually develop a serious health disorder,” Colburn said. “It shouldn’t surprise us. Homelessness is both a cause and a consequence of these conditions, which is why connecting people with the services they need is so essential, and why we need to do it sooner rather than later."

Colburn said intervention is critical to any initiative to reduce homelessness.

"We have the ability to support people with mild mental illness, but if we wait — if we allow them to remain on the streets for years, their condition can deteriorate to something far more severe,” he said. “And at that point, yes, it becomes much harder to get them into stable housing. Then people point to that and say, 'See? Housing doesn’t work.' But the real issue is that we waited too long to intervene. If we didn’t leave people on the street for two years, it'd be a heck of a lot better.”

Solving a Crisis

Although Colburn acknowledges that homelessness is a complicated issue, he proposed solutions to combat the housing market crisis that is driving homelessness.

“We have to think about how to reduce the flow into homelessness, and that’s going to require more housing of all types — market rate, workforce, affordable, permanent supportive housing — you name it, all the above.”

Along with tackling the housing market crisis to reduce homelessness on a community level, other factors that drive homelessness on an individual level must be considered, Colburn added. For example, racism is one of these factors.

Tackling individual level factors like poverty, racism and drug abuse, along with community level factors like the housing market, are steps in the right direction when it comes to eliminating homelessness, he said.

Although it is an ambitious goal, Colburn remains hopeful that homelessness can be solved within his lifetime.

“What gives me hope is that this is a problem that we can absolutely resolve in my lifetime,” he said. “You give people housing, you give them services and it reduces homelessness.”