Fascinating and awful.

My own experience being homeless in this state shares some similarities to yours.

A good friend of mine, facing homelessness, said they refused to be housed at a hotel because of the frequent and obvious drug presence in the local hotels used for housing homeless people.

People talk about addiction and homelessness like they're personality flaws and not problems born out of a low-pay, low-housing, high-cost, high-stress culture.

Unfortunately the answer to every question seems to be "money" - why is this happening? How do we fix it? How do we permanently remove these issues from society?

Keep investigating. Keep pushing for answers. You need a team. Have you considered reaching out to other people and documenting homelessness and housing issues in the state, to be condensed, edited, and presented to the local presses, hopefully moving some change forward?