Family violence is the most frequently reported reason for homelessness in most technologically advanced countries.

Question

Emo Zhao's journal article "The key factors contributing to the persistence of homelessness" goes into the heightening global social issue of homelessness and how its key causes lead to their contribution. Zhao refers to previous literature and personal experiences to go further in-depth to the main causes of homelessness, one of those causes being domestic violence. Zhao mentions that the most frequently reported cause of homelessness is family violence. This claim is caused by reports by the US Bureau of Statistics that state that for homeless people "the proportion for whom their homelessness was due to family violence increased from 10.5% in 2010 to 12.5% in 2016."

Answer 1

The scholarly article that this claim comes from seems to be well researched and was published in the International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology. However, the author does not seem to be an expert of any kind, at the time of the publishing they were a student at Brooklyn Technical High School, which according to the US News & World Report is ranked #67 in the nation and #7 in New York. The article has been extensively researched and uses lots of its own sources. 

One thing that does not back up the claim is that the linked article says that substance abuse “was the most common cause of homelessness”, not family violence. The original claim is mentioned in the article, but only in mentioning a different article which was about the cause of child and youth homelessness. According to the American Bar Association, domestic violence is the leading cause of child homelessness.

When you look up the claim further, most resources list domestic violence as a common reason, but not the most frequently reported. A report from the Institute of Global Homelessness claimed that family violence is one of the strongest indicators of future homelessness.

This claim is somewhat true, but is a bit misleading.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2506142 - cause of child and youth homelessness paper

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/domestic_violence/Initiatives/five-for-five/five-facts-homelessness/ - American Bar Association

https://www.un.org/development/desa/dspd/wp-content/uploads/sites/22/2019/05/CASEY_Louise_Paper.pdf - Institute of Global Homelessness