Silicon Valley has a serious homeless problem, despite the fact that the Valley is home to some of the richest zip codes in the nation. Over the past eight years the U.S. watched its homeless population decline by more than 130,000 people.
That's a nearly 17 percent drop that flies in the face of Silicon valley's 8 percent increase in its homeless population over the last two years.
Not including San Francisco — which has a serious homeless problem of its own — the Silicon Valley stretches through the Santa Clara Valley down from Redwood City, through Palo Alto, Mountain View, and San Jose.
What is causing the trend-bucking homelessness problem in the area? In addition to the rising cost of housing and lack of adequately paying jobs, we found that mental illness and substance abuse are problems in the Valley's homeless community like elsewhere in the country. Forty percent of the country's homeless suffer from substance abuse or mental illness and though the National Alliance on Mental Illness calls California's mentally ill housing the "gold standard," the state cut its mental health budget by 21 percent from 2009 to 2012.
"It's a perfect storm of homelessness," San Jose's Housing 100's Jennifer Loving told Business Insider referring to the budget cuts, lack of allocated housing, recession-era tax breaks in the county, a lack of adequately paying jobs, a growing wealth gap, and rising home prices for sales and rentals.
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