“Medicalization” generally refers to a process in which previously nonmedical conditions come to be understood under the notions of disease and illness. Homelessness is not researched as a disease itself, yet situations for homelessness can be defined as a medical problem. Although medicalization has assisted the healthcare community in gaining awareness of the matter in question, the medicalization of homelessness focuses on cultural and circumstantial understandings rather than professional domain. The medical community reactively spends excessive amounts of money, services and resources on addressing the healthcare needs brought on by homelessness, rather than proactively providing for the tangible needs of the poverty-stricken areas before homelessness occurs. Although access to treatment and medication services is a step in the right direction, it reveals a problem with the medical model: it places homelessness as a potential consequence to disease, addiction or mental illness instead of understanding its contributing nature in creating disease, addition or mental illness.

Politicians and the press tend to link homelessness to mental illness, thus medicalizing a socioeconomic problem. While mental illness can contribute to homelessness, it is not the sole cause. Persisting from the beginning, poverty-stricken communities lacked supportive housing services for individuals experiencing homelessness with acute needs to physical or mental health issues. There was, and currently is, a desperate need for more than just housing. These individuals require additional help to become housed and stay securely housed, in order to maintain mitigate conditions such as a physical ailment or mental ailment exacerbated by homelessness.

Currently, the political and medical sectors focus on prevention and control for disease as well as substance abuse and mental health, which all thrive in poorly maintained areas where more than half the population is prone to experience a form of homelessness. Even with such data and research confirmation, policies continue to stray away from the problem: homelessness itself. The medicalized framework in the US is designed to treat symptoms rather than root causes of homelessness. As a result, legal and policy solutions focus on critiquing this medical framework from an outcome perspective, rather than implementing policies aimed at addressing those root causes. It is important to take a more holistic and systemic approach to address homelessness, one that recognizes the multiple factors that may be contributing to the cause of such debilitating conditions. Shifting the perspective to view homelessness as one of the factors that can create disease, addiction or mental illness may help policymakers create better homeless prevention laws at a federal level, rather than adequately address the notion that treating physical and mental conditions will decrease homelessness.