Homelessness rates in the US are lower than many big European countries: https://www.oecd.org/els/family/HC3-1-Homeless-population.pd...

Lower than France, Germany, and the UK, Sweden, Canada, and Australia. Equal to the Netherlands.

You read the part where they say things are not really comparable because different nations use different definitions, right?

E.g. if you scroll in the article you will find that Germany reports as homeless: "Living temporarily with family and friends due to lack of housing", "Living in institutions"

"Living in institutions" is clarified as: "Including people who stay longer than needed in health institutions needed due to lack of housing; and people in penal institutions with no housing available prior to release".

The US does not count these categories.

Now, it would be interesting to see how the numbers would change if the US actually counted all the millennials who moved back in with their parents because they could not find an affordable place, and all the prisoners and parolees who stay with relatives.

I'm European and I've been to several major cities in the US. I've also visited most european capital cities.

In both cases, as a tourist, I never go too far away from the popular places and never been there for most than 3 or 4 days.

Don't know the reasons (honestly) but the homelessness and poverty I've seen in the US is nowhere to be seen in Europe. I repeat, in "popular" places and vicinity.

How do they come out with such numbers? Is the impression of a tourist wrong? Where are the poor and destitute in Europe compared to the US?

> How do they come out with such numbers?

Different countries define and count "homeless" in different ways.

Some places will only count rough sleepers, and they'll do that by once a year sending people out to count people who are sleeping on the streets. This obviously severely undercounts those who are homeless.

Other places will have a definition for "statutorily homeless" which will include people living in bread-and-breakfast style accommodation - emergency short term lodgings funded by the state.

It sounds like these statistics are utterly useless for national comparisons

> About half of the surveyed countries also cover people living in non-conventional dwellings and people living temporarily with family and friends due to lack of housing,

> In Sweden the official figure given by the National Board of Health and Welfare includes lots of people who don’t have a permanent home but aren’t living in shelters or on the streets. For instance, Sweden includes people set to be released from jail within three months and have nowhere to go

Interesting fact, but not sure what Canada or Australia are doing in that list. Maybe they're in Eurovision?

Correct.

They're semantically European but syntactically not. :-)

i.e. in the OECD countries..

http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/oecd-countries/

I live in Canada, and have been to many US states. This doesn't reflect what I've seen in the least. Even if it is true, it still doesn't change the fact that if the poorest 20% is richer than Europe's middle class that you have more than enough resources to do something about it.

I saw a ton of people sleeping on mattresses and blankets in German train stations last time I went. Were they just enjoying their freedom from the pressures of society?

Maybe we should look at this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_homeless_...

So what are you talking about exactly?

wtf are you talking about?

This literally does not happen in normal operation (because train stations security or police aided by social workers will direct people to homeless shelters, or make them leave if they refuse homeless shelters), and only happened a few times during the height of the refugee crisis in the big cities with new arrivals coming in at a rate where the refugee and homeless shelters in those major arrival cities were overloaded and bureaucracy was too slow to process and re-distribute these arrivals quick enough to avoid some camping in train stations.

The wikipedia article explicitly states:

> This is a list of countries (not all 195) by the homeless population present on any given night. Different countries often use different definitions of homelessness, making direct comparisons of numbers complicated.[3]

For Germany it further states: >*Includes around 350000 refugees in temporary housing or awaiting asylum.

Temporary housing might be shit, but it's still better than living in a cardboard box on skid row. Unless your government provided temporary housing is a literal cage, of course, but we don't have those here.

In Germany "homeless" includes all people who do not have a permanent residence, i.e. people living on the streets but also people who e.g. temporarily live with relatives or friends, e.g. because they have a hard time finding an affordable place in the overcrowded big cities.

PS: I was "homeless" for about a year in Germany. I was looking for a new place after uni, couldn't find one due to overcrowding in the city I was looking in, and stayed in my parents' house during that time, just like I did in my youth. I had a better life incl more privacy there than I previously had with some roommate arrangements. But I was technically homeless under the definition they use for the stats.

This shows the Netherlands having the same homeless ratio as the US at 0.17%

I can't believe this is true. They must have different definitions for homeless.

What does that have to do with the US having the resources to do something about it, and not doing anything?

Where?

When?

City name?

Station name?

Did you call an ambulance?

Why not?

Have you been to a major European train station recently?

Yes

Somehow I'm the one deflecting?

I mean, it's not like they were wrong about that. I don't know what to conclude from this other than most of history is terrible and the present often isn't so great either. Until we live in a utopia, there will be no shortage of targets for whataboutism.

The point is that it's nothing but a deflection tactic, and I don't believe the people doing the lynching were typically the same people concerned about human rights abuses in the USSR. It's an oversimplification used to prevent discussion about real problems.

I think there is a valid point to it – there is a certain degree of hypocrisy in criticising other country's human rights problems when you aren't doing enough to resolve your own country's human rights problems. Calling it "Whataboutism" seems to excuse that hypocrisy rather than giving it the condemnation it deserves.

I'm not defending the Soviet Union, which was truly a horrible regime.

What I'm saying, is the proper response to a criticism of lynching, is to agree with the criticism, not argue that the crimes (no matter how horrid) of those who are making the criticism renders the criticism invalid.

Agreed. You're right, it is hypocritical. There was fierce fighting between two sides of the civil rights issue during that time though. We weren't doing enough, but many people were trying.