Homelessness in America is a serious problem. People who are either unemployed, or are working but still can’t pay the rent.
Japan also has homeless people.
But Europe has extensive social support networks, far greater than those of the US. Do you have a large Homeless population?
If so, tell us about it.
Yes, I think all countries in Europe have homlessness to some degree. In the UK it is definitely a problem.
I would imagine that it isnt a serious problem in scandinavian countries but I couldnt find any cites to support that assumption.
Also a significant problem in Germany. A recent survey in Hamburg (pop 1.7 million) cast its net wide, asking 117 homeless/drug-related assistance centers for help and got to survey 1281 people living on the street. The total must of course be larger than that. Other than that, I found 1990 numbers quoting for West Germany (pop. about 64 million, if I rightly recollect) 800.000 people who did not rent or own accomodation, of which 130.000 did not have a roof over their head at all.
Some global data from the Hamburg survey:
gender: 78 % men, 22 % women
median age: man 42 years, women 32 years
mean length of having lived on the street: 4 years
Other data cited in the survey:
mean age at death of 388 deceased homeless people in Hamburg: 44.5 years. About half of the decedents had been drug/alcohol dependent.
Depends on the definition of “serious problem”.
There are homeless people in Denmark (where I’m from) - and this is despite the fact that, by law, if you show up at city hall saying “I have no place to live”, the authorities have to find you lodging of sorts, period. Social services are pretty decent - to the point where the economic advantage of a minimum-wage job becomes almost symbolic.
Still, some people simply are beyond help. They’ll very often be either borderline psychiatric patients or substance abusers or both. For many of them, their only social interaction is with other people on the street, and I guess it’s only human that not everybody will give that up to live alone in an efficiency in the suburbs.
Still, I’ve yet to notice the “people-living-semipermanently–in-cardboard-boxes” I’ve seen in most other big cities in Copenhagen. If you’re just down on your luck, there’s help to be had. But if you’re too far out to be able to accept help, well…
“asking 117 homeless/drug-related assistance centers for help and got to survey 1281 people living on the street. The total must of course be larger than that.”
How do you know that total must of course be larger than 1281?
How did they assure that none of the people surveyed were counted more than once? I’m not so sure that these surveys are so easy to do.
Evidently homeless people are not unknown in Taiwan. An account of the quarantine measures taken to control SARS in hospitals in Taiwan mentions that “Homeless persons, who often use hospital toilet facilities, were asked to go voluntarily to government quarantine centers under Level A quarantine.”
From what I have gathered, the situation in Sweden is such that the people in Sweden who are traditionally homeless (living on the streets in other words) are almost only those who are completely incapable of taking care of themselves. This group is mainly made up of severely mentally/emotionally disabled people and very far gone drug addicts. As Spiney Norman said of Denmark, if you are capable of the basics (returning to the home you are provided with, cashing your cheque and paying your bills with it, etc) then you can take advantage of societys safety net. It is virtually impossible to fall through the net if you do not have huge personal problems such as psychiatric disorders, severe addiction etc. whereas in some countries it seems to be very possible to miss a rent payment and end up on a slippery slope to the streets.
If one talks about a broader definition of homelessness, such as “no fixed abode” then there is a larger problem, especially in Stockholm. The housing shortage has lead to a lot of people staying for periods of months in friends homes. This would be the case for e.g. a couple who splits up, he keeps the appartment, she doesn’t want to move to a further away area as she doesn’t want the kids to change schools, but it is not yet possible to find an appartment in the area, or not possible until the familys appartment is sold.
Then of course you have young people who, while not homeless in the strictest sense of the word, will stay out nights sometimes, or take to the streets for short periods, or stay at friends homes for periods to avoid problematic situations at home.
Yay social democracy! 
Iteki.
Hmmm…
We had a social reform 1994, when we shut down a lot of mental institutions, with the purpose of integrating the mentally dfisabled in society. While this was a nice thought from our politicians, within a year, we had problems we’d never seen before, to wit:
Beggars in the streets
Homeless poeple talking to their ancestors
Homeless people going through garbage cans
Confused poeple roaming the streets, looking for a place to belong.
It’s not a big problem yet. If nothing is done, it will be.
WRT to the original question and what I read in the Hamburg survey that I cited:
It seems to me that in Germany (don’t know if it also applies to all other European countries), to be really homeless i.e. living on the street, you must have at least one serious problem other than having no income.
But I assume this also applies in the US.
We had that identical “social reform” in the USA in the late 1970s and early 1980s. We called it “dumping”.
Today, we now get to live with the lovely legacy of the policy. Fortunately, most of the people aren’t violent–most of them.
I know, Dogface. And that’s the sad part. Our politicians could easily have checked how this worked out in the US. Obviously they didn’t. And this is supposed to be the role modell of welfare states.
You would assume wrongly, tschild, even though I wish you were correct. Lack of income is indeed sufficient cause for homelessness, at least in the parts of the US with which I am familiar. There are many people who hold down part-time or low-paying jobs who are homeless.
The Gaspode, of course I wasn’t trying to imply that there are no homeless people in Sweden, just stating that the situation is a lot less widespread than in other countries where, as Antonius Block says, plain old lack of money can put you on the street.
Same in the UK, Dogface, where they called chucking mentally ill people on the streets “Care in the Community”. Even if you don’t have psychiatric problems, there are various procedural quirks that contribute to homelessness. For instance, you can’t get benefits without a fixed address; without benefits, many people can’t afford the rent for the fixed address to qualify for benefits.
Exactly. Moving from London to Stockholm, one of the first things I noticed was the lack of people sleeping on the streets.