How to Think About Homelessness: Balancing Structural and Individual Causes

Literature on homelessness acknowledges two types of causes of homelessness: structural and individual causes. Cited examples of structural causes include trends in unemployment and poverty, the housing market, the structure of the economy generally, and large-scale social policies. Examples given ofindividual causes include mental illness, alcoholism, substance abuse, and lack of a work ethic. Virtually all researchers pick either structural or individual factors as the “primary” cause ofhomelessness and then argue the unimportance of the other set of factors.