Most homeless people (at least around here) don’t literally live outside but in various temporary arrangements. Yes, in colder climates it is a more pressing social problem to get people inside from literal freezing conditions. But that’s definitely not the reason there are fewer homeless in Europe than in the US. Long-term homeless people tend to be either those who refuse help (and cannot be helped against their will) or those that the system has failed due to misguided right-wing policies like "sobriety first" which is totally backwards.
At the bottom of things, the homelessness is just a symptom, while the root cause is mental illness or people living self-destructive lives (addicts, people who just don't care what happens to them and have no care for the future etc.). It's no longer 1930s, where "normal" people could genuinely be homeless because of economic difficulties. Sure, it occasionally happens now as well, but such people generally disappear from the streets within months (as they get a job and get back on their feet), not spend their entire lives on them.
In general, people care about homelessness, because it affects and offends them - so their solutions are to give some place to live to the homeless. It doesn't solve the problem though, as the homeless will still either be mentally ill or will engage in self-destructive behaviour - so they're quite likely to demolish the place, set it on fire, turn it into a crack den etc. But, the society does not ultimately care about that that much, but mostly wants to not have their moods ruined by seeing homeless on the streets - so warehousing them somewhere is seen as a good solution.
Unfortunately, at least around here, in one of the most "welfare" of welfare states, a major cause of homelessness is substance abuse (traditionally alcoholism) caused by insufficient social safety nets (almost always males who have undergone a major crisis in life such as a divorce or a loss of job, exacerbated by various toxic norms associated with masculinity such as the expectation of self-sufficiency).
People who "live self-destructive lives" have not always done so; at some point something has gone wrong in their lives. It is not an identity or (usually) an inborn personality trait, and "othering" people with addictions like that is simply an example of the correspondence bias and a part of the meme complex that maintains the status quo of homelessness.
In a representative democracy, we elect representatives in the hopes that they have a decisionmaking and problem-solving ability more holistic and less short-sighted than just "out of sight, out of mind". At least, that's what the ideal is. The process can be abused by populists good at appealing to people's intuitions and emotions while having few real solutions, but that doesn't mean we should just give up!
> toxic norms associated with masculinity such as the expectation of self-sufficiency
What? It's toxic to expect someone to be self-sufficient? I guess all our civilization was built on toxic grounds - it's amazing what all that toxicity accomplished though.
> People who "live self-destructive lives" have not always done so; at some point something has gone wrong in their lives. It is not an identity or (usually) an inborn personality trait, and "othering" people with addictions like that is simply an example of the correspondence bias and a part of the meme complex that maintains the status quo of homelessness.
I don't think I'm "othering" them (I'm not sure though, because I'm not sure what it means). I'm just describing their current situation. I'm not claiming there were born as petty thieves or alcoholics or will remain petty thieves or alcoholics for the rest of their lives.
The homeless alcoholics I personally know usually took a decade or more of gradually increasing selfish and antisocial behaviour to eventually end up on streets (as they've eventually used up the good will of everyone in their lives and no one was there to support them any more). What made them go down that path while people, who have as shitty lives as them or worse, stood on their feet - who knows? We don't understand human psychology to the degree to be able to answer that question.
BTW, I've recently re-read some Bukowski, and I think he's giving a good description of an inner life of a person with some self-destructive personality traits. In his case they were fairly mild, so he still managed to hold a job and be off the street most of the time. The real homeless I know have even more anger, self-pity, narcissism and/or straight up psychopathy. At least one of them is a straight-up predator, who's homeless because he finally ran out of people to prey upon.
Perhaps self-sufficiency was a word with too positive connotations; what I meant, of course, was destructive learned mental models such as being too proud to ask for help or go to a doctor before it’s too late, and not having formed a safety net of close friends because men are not supposed to need them. Additionally, what is often devastating to men in particular is that in nasty divorces, the custody of children is almost always given to the mother.
> It's no longer 1930s, where "normal" people could genuinely be homeless because of economic difficulties.
We're getting back there. With the added problem of cheap fentanyl easily available. The amount of young people I've seen on the streets has skyrocketed, not to mention refugees on the corners begging. This is Chicago. And lots of young people, especially those not lucky enough to be in the laptop class- are just a few paychecks from homelessness. It will be even worse this winter when cost of living goes up and you can't afford to live while working.
