As we all know the reason there are homeless people in the USA is because of the Republicans, and of course, guys like me who make a good living but don’t pay my “fair share” of income taxes. :rolleyes:. But neither I, nor the Republicans are in, or control Europe. So, are there as many (per capita) homeless people in European countries as there are in the states?
If so, what do those countries do about the problem?
Do you have a cite for this? Any factual data to back this assertation up?
::Trying to steer clear of a political debate::
Without any hard statistics, I’d say that there are a lot less homeless people in (at least) nothern/western Europe. (At least htey are a lot less visible than in the US.)
It is very difficult to measure homelessness, as there are no well-defined limits. Are you homeless if you rent out your appartment while traveling? Or living on a boat? Or in a car? Or squating with friends?
According to European Observatory on Homelessness:
How is homelessness defined in America?
pkbites did an eyeroll after the republican comment - it was sarcasm, I take. Follow his point??
Let’s start from ground up:
travellers, in big cities across the US and Europe: How would you compare the number of panhandlers and other street dwellers you’ve encountered…US vs. Europe?
I’m just back from a few days in London, having spent most of my time in central areas doing tourist things on foot or using the tube. I felt there were far fewer beggars or obviously homeless people than on previous visits. I wasn’t counting, but can remember around 4/5 people in three days, “Big Issue” sellers excluded.
I’ve visited Berlin and Hamburg, (though not recently) and saw fewer.
I visited Ottawa last November, during a very mild spell, and saw just one guy begging.
I last visited the US about 18 months ago, taking in San Francisco and Washington DC. I was pretty surprised by the numbers of people begging. Certainly more than enough for me to get immune to them within a day 
.
I have to say, however, that the beggars of DC are the most polite I have ever met. 
When I was in the Soviet Union, Poland, Germand Democratic Republic, France, Israel, Jordon, West Bank and Gaza during the eighties-the last time I traveled abroad- I saw no homeless people.
My impression is that today mass homelessness is mostly a US phenomenom, due to the release of hordes of mentally ill people from mental institutions during the Reagan years, the general shreading of the social safety net, and the deterioration of US society in general.
Yes, here, our poor nag you for your money. In Europe, they pick your pockets. I guess it’s all a matter of local custom.
Do Gypsies count as homeless? Europe definitely has a lot more of them, and they fill the same niche.
If this is going to be a GQ then what we need is reliable statistics because I am sorry but “I was there for a week and didn’t see many” is totally useless anecdote. Even people who live in a country can be quite ignorant of what goes on in other parts of the country. So what we need is hard statistics.
I can tell you that there are thousands of Morroccan and Eastern European illegal immigrants living in shantytowns in Southern Europe where immigration is hardly controlled. Italy has had to tighten its immigration policies recently and I recently saw in the news in southern Spain hundreds of Morroccans who lived in the fields in makeshift tents and ate what food they could steal from the fields or scrounging from the garbage. After it was aired the Red Cross or some such organization started some program to feed them three times a week.
Homeless is a difficult term to define. Housing is much more expensive in Europe than in the US. Many young people cannot afford their own dwelling and so remain with their parents until their 30s. Are they “homeless”?
The fact is housing is much more affordable in America than in Europe. Whether there are more homeless in one place or the other is something I do not know.
I think tourists may not get the best perspective.
I know after college in London, I didn’t see many panhandlers, until I went to Brixton. That’s not a typical part of the city a visitor might see.
I also know that Japan, for instance, has no idea how many homeless they have, because there aren’t many social programs to help them. There are lots of people living in tents in parks in urban Japan. How many? Nobody knows.
Cite: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/feb2001/jap-f16.shtml
according to http://nch.ari.net/numbers.html, there are 500,000 - 700,000 homeless people in the US, a rate of about 0.20-0.30 %
according to http://www.shareintl.org/archives/homelessness/hl-abGermany.htm, there are similar numbers in germany, which is three times the US rate !
Norways rate is lower at about 0.14 http://www.shareintl.org/archives/homelessness/hl-asbNorway.htm
spain 273,000 people out of a population of 39.6 million live on the streets, in hostels, or in sub-standard houses http://www.shareintl.org/archives/homelessness/hl-cfSpain.htm
360,000 homeless people in England out of 60,000,000 http://www.shareintl.org/archives/homelessness/hl-blUK.htm
Note that these statistics may be meaningless as they may be measuring different things e.g. rough sleepers, slum dwellers, or squatters. For instance in the UK, the number of “rough sleepers” is probably less than 20,000 (no cite but from memory). But on the face of it, the US does not seem to have more homeless than any other country. Need more info on how the above figure s were compiled.
<anecdote>
When in the S. of France and Spain we often saw homeless people, and they always had a dog. We used to say that for the dog, this was the Longest Walk in the World.
</anecdote>
Athens News and the other Greek newspapers used to comment on the growing homeless problem there quite a lot; if you searched their archives (assuming they are easily searchable), you’d have a feel for the problem as well as some data.
The problem there has 2 main dimensions (according to the papers):
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The more or less traditionally homeless, such as the Roma/Sinti/“Gypsies”, and the indigent and uninstitutionalized Greeks. I wouldn’t know a gypsy unless someone pointed them out to me, but the Greeks I know would almost invariably charaterize all panhandlers and the like as “gypsies”.
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Illegal immigrants. Albanians lead the list of illegals from neighboring countries (and are a by-word in Greece for criminality, or so it seems), but Kurds and others from the Islamic countries are increasing in numbers rapidly. Somehow, illegals all the way from sub-saharan Africa are featured in the papers from time to time. As a guess, I would say only the less clever or less well connected illegals are reduced to living on the streets.
Omonia square used to be written about as the hangout for druggies and illegals. I read that the Gypsies also had a more or less permanent shantytown in the Athens dump.
I suppose that the point is that anecdotal data is especially suspect as an approximation of European homelessness, as (if we go by what I gather from the Greek news) the Europeans are less tolerant of the public appearance of such people and tend to keep them out of sight (and so out of mind).
By “beggars of DC” do you mean congress? I find them to be very impolite. They reach into my pocket without even asking or saying thank you.
The fact that America has a more temperate climate than most of Europe may be a factor as well.
Someone earlier noted that the “shredding of the social safety net” here was a factor. My opinion is that the ready availability of handouts removes the incentive to being self sufficient.
Does anyone have any statistics on the difference between homelessness in our largest cities and smaller communities?
I personally do not think we have a homeless problem. I think we have a problem of too many people who find an easy alternative to gainful employment and still manage to get enough money through the generosity of the public to fund their basic needs plus booze and cigarettes.
Has anyone else ever tried to take one of those guys with the “Will work for food” signs up on the offer? I have, and not one of them has been willing to actually do some work. The only one of them I’ve ever given money too was the first guy I saw with the sign “Why lie? I just want a beer!”.
Why should they get a job when they can make over $10/hr in handouts from softhearted (softheaded?) people?
Now before someone accuses me of being mean and nasty, let me say that I have been known to give food to some of them that you get used to seeing in an area and know that they arent just migrant vagrants that move around from place to place. However I will never give them money because you know they will just buy booze with it.
You offer a good reminder, here. What we personally see doesn’t really measure anything objectively in this case; I’ve seen only one homeless person (that I know of) and no moose at all in my state, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t thousands of each. I hope though, that the moose, being 10,000 strong according to stats, out-number the homeless in New Hampshire. The only NH homeless stat I could find is 1,200 vets, but there are more due to families…
My in-laws hired a former homeless person to be their caretaker on their organic beef farm in Canterbury, NH. He had simply slept in a tent with his dog in the White Mountains for most of his life (think serious real-life resemblance to Larry, Darryl, and Darryl). He said that he wanted a job because his dog couldn’t take the cold anymore and winter was approaching. The position came with a house. Five months later, my in-laws went up for the weekend and found the caretaker’s cottage vacant. The only thing left was a note saying: “It’s not so cold anymore. My dog should be Ok now. I quit.”
I don’t think this is true at all (Eastern Europe excepted). For instance, all I ever remembering hearing about settlers was how unbelievably harsh the American winters were to early European colonists, who had never been prepared for such weather in their home countries.