You would then expect the percent of homeless per state to be roughly similar, when it in fact varies tremendously: https://www.statista.com/statistics/727847/homelessness-rate...

NYC, HI, CA >40 per 100k homeless in 2020 (higher now)

States with lots of poverty but also extremely cheap housing at the bottom with a 5x lower rate of homelessness: LA, AL, MS

Similarly, WV very low on the list despite being high on all of the other supposedly causal factors such as mental health and drug problems

Poor people with mental health and addiction problems can still live with a roof over their head as long as they're not competing with tech salaries to buy any kind of shelter.

> You would then expect the percent of homeless per state to be roughly similar

No, I would expect the opposite. All the would be homeless in unappealing states leave and go to california or NYC because if they're not paying for housing they figure might as well go to the nicest area.

That's a very different model than 'prefer to live in the same places everyone else' -- you're saying that wherever housed people want to live, the homeless want to live there even more.

Not obvious that there's evidence for that

There are confounding factors at work here - for example, since 1979, people in NY have a legal right-to-shelter founded on the state constitution which does tend to generate a more encompassing homelessness policy than in, say, PA.