But I can easily imagine that out of 8 million people living in New York City, a certain number does not want to live at home and actually prefer staying outside.
And you're right, there are some people who are homeless by choice, but they are a tiny, tiny minority, probably less than 1% of the homeless population.
I sincerely wonder why.
My "off-the-top" theory would be that these people are either indeed homeless by choice or they are such assholes that not a single shelter would tolerate them.
How wrong am I?
[1] https://www.hudexchange.info/resource/5948/2019-ahar-part-1-...
Very. Did you actually read the report? The answer is right there:
"On a single night in 2019, roughly 568,000 people were experiencing homelessness in the United States. Nearly two-thirds (63%) were staying in sheltered locations—emergency shelters or transitional housing programs—and more than one-third (37%) were in unsheltered locations such as on the street, in abandoned buildings, or in other places not suitable for human habitation."
So being unsheltered has nothing at all to do with being voluntarily homeless. These are completely orthogonal matters. In fact, the HUD report does not deal with voluntary homelessness at all, almost certainly because the number of such people is so small that they can be safely discounted for public policy purposes.
It is also really hard to assess whether someone is voluntarily homeless. My film was shot in Santa Monica, CA. One of the subjects I interviewed had reliable income, enough to pay the rent somewhere, but not in Santa Monica. Given the choice between being on the street in Santa Monica and being in a low-rent apartment in some random place far from home, he chose to stay in Santa Monica. But all else being equal he would have preferred to be inside. Is that person "voluntarily homeless"?