On Thu, 07 Sep 2000, Damien Broderick wrote:
> At 03:22 PM 7/09/00 -0700, James Rogers wrote:
> >Per the Australian government: ~150k out of 20M people are currently
> >classified as homeless
> >Per various U.S. sources (primarily advocacy and academic sources): Total
> >homeless population in the United States is currently estimated at
> >500-750k and relatively stable, depending on the source. Total population
> >of the U.S.: around 260M.
>
> Hmm, I'm dead in the water.
>
> I'm sure there's an excuse, though. :)
Actually, it is fairly consistent. Most western European countries appear
to have a homeless rate more in line with Australia than the U.S. IIRC, a
few countries, such as Germany, actually have more homeless people in
*absolute* terms (as I recall, the stat for Germany was 850k homeless,
with a third of those being immigrants).
> I mentioned `visible hungry homeless people'. I wonder if the definitions
> vary between continents. I don't see that many filthy, demented people
> wandering the streets here, panhandling and just looking awful. Admittedly
> I don't get out of the suburbs much these days, but Melbourne or Sydney
> city proper aren't anything like I recall seeing in Manhattan, say. (The
> density of people doesn't feel all that different on the ground, especially
> in Sydney.)
I think the standards are about the same, but the situations are
different. Because much homelessness is taken care of by private
charities in the U.S., the subpopulations of homeless people are not
evenly distributed, as different populations tend to concentrate in areas
that service their homeless situation best. In contrast, in countries
where homelessness is serviced largely by the government, I would expect
that the subpopulations of homeless people to be distributed about the
same as there is no significant differentiation in aid availability from
one locale to the next. In other words, in the U.S., people homeless by
reason of drug addiction, mental illness, unemployment, etc. have different
distribution patterns respectively, so you end up with concentrations in
certain areas of some of the more overtly homeless people (e.g. the
mentally ill homeless population), whereas you may not notice the
homeless in other areas, such as the unemployed homeless common in rural
areas. It does seem that some of the more overt homeless populations
(addiction, mental illness, and similar) tend to concentrate in the
cities. Many rural counties have a large homeless population because of
low employment availability, but those homeless are outside most people's
experience and they are not so obviously homeless (they are also typically
taken care of quite well by the local communities).
Some cities in the U.S. do have a lot of homeless, but these are also the
cities that have very generous social programs, lots of handouts, and very
lenient vagrancy laws. Around where I live, that would be places like San
Francisco and Santa Cruz, where not surprisingly, you see most of the very
obviously homeless people, most with addiction or mental illness problems.
On the other hand, some cities have essentially no visible homeless
population.
-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com
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