No, I talked about the risk of becoming homeless due to striving for wealth and total failure on the way. I see this risk as extremely minimal, not because people can get out of homelessness or only experience "shot term homelessness", but because I dont think you ever end up in this situation in the first place. Going 100% at becoming wealthy doesn't mean you turn stupid and irresponsible and also loose any friend and everything that could keep you afloat if you totally fail. That's just not realistic.

The example I bough up may be anecdotal but It wasn't mean to show that people can get out of homelessness if they mess up and end there but rather to underline my argument that homelessness in general is only an "option" for a very niche type of person. There are also way way less female homeless people and it certainly isn't because females are somehow more capable to avoid total failure.

The person I worked with was homeless due to his family abandoning him (they where part of a religious sect) before he ever had the chance to stand on his own feet. But he was not the type of person that would accept homelessness and that's the sole reason he isn't anymore.

In the end people are scared to fall really low by trying to go high but while you indeed fall longer and further down when you fall from high you dont really end up lower. It just hurts more especially if you worked very hard to get up. With the exception of age/metal decline and health problems you very very likely get back up higher than where you started no matter what causes you to fail.