Well, you may be right. Having been homeless and a street person at one point in my life, many homeless people have mental issues. Do you know what we used to do in California before Ronald Reagan was governor?

We used to have a big system of mental health facilities for institutionalizing people who couldn't live on their own. A world class set of facilities in fact.

It was expensive and some people found it coercive. There were a number of egregious cases where women's families institutionalized them for basically being outspoken. People were given electroshock therapy or lobotomized to make them compliant (see One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest).

Liberals wanted to decriminalize mental illness and not just "lock away" the mentally ill. Republicans wanted to "cut taxes". The "solution" Reagan sold was "community treatment centers".

There was going to be centers in every community. So, that people could get treatment without being shipped away and locked up. So, that they could manage their illness and stay in their community and homes.

Everyone LOVED that idea. Reagan sold the shit out of it and people voted for it.

In what we now know is the Republican "con job" playbook. They promise something great to shut down what exits, then cancel or refuse to allocate money for the new system they promised they would build.

They talk about the HUGE SAVINGS, "look at the FAT we cut out of the budget"! Then don't address the systemic problems their "cheap" solution created.

Instead of expensive care in state run mental facilities we now lock up the mentally ill in county jails and state prisons. Those that don't get locked up live on the streets.

Because the "community mental health centers" never got funded. Ever.

The Republican position became, "homeless people flock to California because we are too generous and nice". We need to "crackdown" on them. If we make it hard for them they will "go somewhere else".

That's why so many homeless people are mentally ill. Because that solution works so poorly.