Seeing the horrible conditions homeless and desperately poor people face in the US is one of the deeply shocking things about coming from the EU. Even in poorer countries in Eastern Europe, you don’t see the kind of totally fucked up living situations that you do in SF and Seattle. What can a person do to help with this, as the government (at least federal/state level) seems to have no desire to do anything about it? Is it because there’s no medical care available? Is it because of housing? Wages? What? How do we fix this?
It's a really peculiar situation, and the cities you mentioned spend hundreds of millions on homeless programs and the politicians there have tried a slew of policies but to little avail. You could always argue the government needs to do even more, but it's wrong to say our politicians have no desire to do anything about it.
I know this sounds cynical, but I really think that politicians' policies - which are just plans to spend other people's money - are no substitute for motivated people actually going out and making a difference.
Those cities have the most homeless people because they have the best weather and political support for homeless people to survive than anywhere else. They are better not worse.
Are you sure there’s not similar situations in Europe? I’m sure the healthcare situation over there helps a lot, but it looks like there’s still groups of people living in tents in some places. https://www.politico.eu/article/homelessness-qa-freek-spinne...
I know Japan also has a bunch of homeless people living in tents as well, I’ve seen them riding around collecting cans to recycle for money.
