you've got a lot yet to learn along your budding journalism career and will no doubt be shocked to discover the realities I barely mentioned to which you've countered, it's in fact far more involved / complicated, tragic and insidious. The frustrating part is it's all avoidable but our officials are in a different world about all this, to say the least, we certainly need lots of good people running for office to overcome these constant barriers. Our officials are the problem.
To say that ''most of the chronically homeless have severe mental health or drug addiction issues'' is well known to be a falsehood, they're just easier to notice, most homeless are merely unable to make it financially to get a home and sustain it.
Can you share info on 'permanent housing'? AFAIK there is little to none and Housing First hit the wall in finding homes for their clients a long time ago, they're struggling, if you can provide any locations available that would certainly benefit the many hopefuls.