Now, one fact we can identify from looking at this map is that California despite its high numbers of homelessness is actually not bad in terms of relative population of homeless people, as it hovers at around the 33 per 10,000 homeless mark, as opposed to New York(45 per 10,000), Hawaii(51 per 10,000) and the District of Columbia(107 per 10,000). This shows that despite its high numbers, California is actually better at managing its homeless population than quite a few others with fewer numbers.

Now, another facet one can look at is the breakdown of the sheltered and unsheltered homeless populations, as shown below:

Here, you will notice that over 60% of the homeless population is sheltered. New York, despite having the second most number of Homeless people in the US and having the third-highest rates of homeless per 10,000 people, has only 4500 unsheltered homeless compared to its total homeless population of 89,500. A far cry from California, whose unsheltered homeless population is almost equal to the total number of homeless people in the state of New York.

This is a trend that is actually found to be exhibited in how colder the state tends to be, with states having low temperatures, being the ones with more sheltered homeless people, ie., New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, New Jersey, etc. while those having warmer climates, like California, Texas, Florida, Nevada having a greater proportion of unsheltered homeless.

Now, this problem of homelessness is worse on the unsheltered population as they are the ones who are left to fend for themselves and are usually the most vulnerable to calamities and harm. With 188,409 unsheltered homeless people in the USA, this presents a severe problem that is required to be addressed.

We can see here that apart from the states of California and Florida, the other states easily have the capacity to accommodate their unsheltered homeless using unoccupied rental units. A system could be implemented where in, the government could intervene and provide something similar to the affordable housing act.

This could allow for a win-win situation for both homeowners and the homeless, where the government covers for the cost of the homeowners, to cover the minimum costs, thereby allowing the homeowners to generate enough to pay the mortgage and a bit more for maintenance, while the unsheltered homeless will have a place to shelter them, thereby minimizing the impact of their homelessness.

In summary, through the data analysis conducted, we can understand that despite the high demand, there are lots of vacant rental units. These spots can be used to provide accommodation for the unsheltered homeless population in the United States through a federal implementation of the Affordable Housing Act. This would allow for the homeless to have a place to stay while providing income to cover the fixed costs for the homeowners renting these places.

This would also incentivize homeowners to improve the quality of the existing houses they provide in the market to get rent-paying occupants in their units instead of just the minimum costs provided by the governments, and helping even the highly burdened renters overall.