Seattle's homeless problem could be harbinger of things to come in Austin

Urban migratory villagers.

It's a combination of lack of affordable housing, lack of investment in mental health counselors and facilities. Side effect of a robust economy is rising rents and massive real estate development / rehabilitation. This raises rents above what some can afford to pay resulting in homelessness. Also, side effect of a deep recession such as 2008 is people give up looking for a job and their skills disappear or atrophy to the point, employers will no longer pay a liveable wage to them. I can go without a job in IT for about a year or two, after that most employers will not hire me as they presume my past skills are gone. The last issue is mental health and the Feds investment in mental health issues has never been adequate.

To fix homelessness you have to build affordable housing, a decent homeless shelter with mental health and social counselors to get these people back into programs that will help them. For large cities that is a $100+ million or more investment which has almost no political constituency. So most large cities find the investment difficult to make and we end up here with people on the street and tent cities.