[e_i_pi_2]

OP does address why it's critical:

> Not that we need to re-litigate that homelessness as a national security issue

Without this it's easy to think that this was just a bad actor we could have caught, instead of just a symptom of a deeper issue not being addressed

I'd be more surprised if there isn't a causal link between homelessness and making bad choices - I don't think it's really disputed that there's a causal link between homelessness and crime in general.

[fc417fc802]

Amusingly, a significant fraction of people will read what you wrote as a causal link in a particular direction and agree with it. And a different fraction of people will read it as the link going in the other direction and also agree.

[e_i_pi_2]

I'd hope that it's not a significant fraction that would get it backwards haha but just to clarify - homelessness/poverty will cause people (on average) to make worse decisions and lower cognitive ability, but making bad decisions or having a lower cognitive ability is not a cause of homelessness/poverty, at least from a statistical causality perspective on a population, individual cases will of course be different