My Honest Take on… “Homelessness is a Housing Problem”

Let me save you 200 pages: homelessness, according to Gregg Colburn and Clayton Page Aldern, is primarily a housing problem.

That’s the thesis—and to their credit, they stick to it. But here’s my honest take: the book reads more like someone’s graduate capstone project than a public call to action. It’s heavy on data, government agency citations, and academic studies, and light on vision, void of interviews with actual homeless individuals, or any meaningful conversation about what we’re supposed to do next.

Distilled Points:

The authors make a single, consistent point: homelessness rates vary widely across U.S. cities, and those rates correlate most strongly with housing market conditions, not poverty, addiction, or mental illness. In simpler terms:

• Places with tight housing supply and high rents (think San Francisco, Seattle, L.A.) have higher homelessness.
• Places with cheaper, more available housing (like Detroit or Houston) have lower homelessness—even if poverty rates are higher.

They support this argument with data charts, regression models, and references to dozens of housing studies. It’s methodical and clear. But it’s also clinical.

What I Took Away:

I didn’t walk away from this book with a fresh understanding—I walked away thinking, “That’s it?”

And maybe that’s because I’ve already spent time thinking about homelessness as a systemic, interconnected issue. If you’re just entering the conversation and think homelessness is mostly about people making bad choices, then this book may be exactly what you need. But if you already know the issue is complex—and rooted in policy, economics, urban planning, and more—this might feel like 200 pages saying what the title already told you.

What’s Missing:

No real discussion of prevention—especially through education or workforce development.

No deep, meaningful exploration of race, incarceration, or child support policy (one of which I know from experience is deeply tied to housing insecurity).

No voices from people experiencing homelessness. It’s all analysis, no human connection. Crucial to the solution is to ASK QUESTIONS and LISTEN! Talk to the ones experiencing homelessness.

Final Thought:

The authors succeeded in their mission. They challenged conventional wisdom. But for someone like me, who’s reading through the lens of education, youth development, and public policy reform—it left me wanting much more.

Homelessness is a housing problem. But it’s also a problem of opportunity, of education, of access, and of systems that fail long before someone ends up without a roof.

If you’re new to this space, this book will give you a solid start. But if you’re already digging deeper—it might be time to turn the page.