Taboo question: What is an acceptable homeless population? What is your reference point? Obviously, poverty will always exist in some form, but how much can we realistically improve it?
There are probably a few people who fall between the cracks in the system, e.g. illegal immigrants who are on the run from the authorities or people who are mentally ill and actively resist medical care or help from the government. But there are practically zero people who are involuntarily homeless, for some fuzzy definition of the term involuntary.
the majority of conditions you give for people falling through the cracks applies to the vast majority of Western countries. The world has a need to better mental health treatment. Cities in the US spend tens of millions and more to combat homelessness but it is not a simple problem.
there were stories about banning begging in Norway, I guess hiding a problem makes it go away. Don't fret, it is a practice many big American cities use as well, especially when large number of visitors are in town. hence the problem, we want to pretend it doesn't exist so we hide it
No one will debate that a person without a fixed domicile that receives $800/month[0] by the state and is regularly encouraged to seek free mental health care, is much better off than someone that receives no financial aid and is forced to beg or eat trash in order to stay alive.
The situation with begging in Norway is complex and not a direct proxy for extreme poverty[1]. Do agree that better mental health treatment is required in large parts of the world, and that homelessness and poverty are complex and cannot be solved by simply paying someone to fix things.
What I was trying to say was that it is a problem that can to a large extent be mitigated, if there is a cultural will to do it. It is by no means a phenomenon that will always be unacceptably bad if some moderate measures are taken to alleviate it.
[0]: https://www.nav.no/no/NAV+og+samfunn/Kontakt+NAV/Utbetalinge...
[1]: https://tv.nrk.no/serie/brennpunkt/mddp11000617/18-04-2017, documentary following beggars in Bergen for two years. A large proportion is found to be part of specific human trafficking schemes.
Maybe the long term plan should be to give homeless people a one way ticket to Norway. (sarcasm)
It's not culturally achievable because Americans buy into a just world fallacy for every social ill: all the wrongs in the U.S. are because whoever's suffering deserved it. For all the people who say capitalism is our national religion, I'd say this fallacy is one of our ten commandments, right after "screw you I got mine".
If power was transferred from the central govt to the states, then each state would be able to function like a small country and better manage local problems like homelessness much like Norway. Socialism nor capitalism function efficiently at this large of a scale.
[0] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/10/nevada-settles-b...
[1] http://www.sacbee.com/news/investigations/nevada-patient-bus...
It's not obvious to me why that should be true. What is your logic?
When talking about homelessness, you're talking about "absolute poverty": the lack of means necessary to meet your basic needs (food, clothing, shelter). In this case, by definition, you can't meet at least the need for shelter.
There's no reason that homelessness (or even absolute poverty) should always exist.
Absolute poverty should not exist in germany at all, but relative poverty is still a major issue: no access to a lot of the public life, less access to education, these are still problematic, even if the basic survival is ensured.
> In 2008, "extreme poverty" widely refers to earning below the international poverty line of $1.25/day (in 2005 prices), set by the World Bank. This measure is the equivalent to earning $1.00 a day in 1996 US prices, hence the widely used expression, living on "less than a dollar a day."[3] The vast majority of those in extreme poverty – 96% – reside in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, The West Indies, East Asia and the Pacific; nearly half live in India and China alone.
Surely most homeless scrounge together at least $1 per day? I bet just begging gets you more than that on average.
Sure that $1 won't get you very far in the US, but it brings you out of absolute poverty and into relative poverty.
(No, I'm not saying it's their fault or that they deserve to suffer. Just making a positive, not normative statement.)
It's also notable that the gradient between fully functional people and the mentally ill people you describe is entirely smooth.
The clear medical distinction between "mentally ill" and "not mentally ill" is an artificial construction that makes the situation easier to describe by throwing away most of the information.
In truth, there is no clear line where one goes from "needs institutionalization" to "self-managing adult". It's all a matter of degree, which makes the whole discussion really difficult.
What happens to the people who aren't medically diagnosible as mentally ill, but do have personalities, habits, or traits that make them take decisions that always destroy any opportunities or resources available to them?
This group gets ignored a lot, often (I think) because it's uncomfortable to think about how such people exist, because in some moral systems there is no solution that doesn't hurt somehow.