The UK has 1.75x the number of people than California, but has 2.19x the number of homeless people (more than 250,000 as of 2016, compared to California having 114,000 as of 2017).
For instance, New Zealand has the highest number of homeless people per capita. But this is only because in New Zealand, you're basically counted as homeless if you don't have a rental contract or own a house. I was technically homeless for 18 months or so, despite having a roof over my head and being perfectly happy with my living situation, I certainly didn't consider myself homeless until I read an article telling me I was. I still didn't consider myself homeless after reading the article.
Unless we know how the numbers for the UK and California are calculated, there's no point in trying to compare the numbers. Where did you source your numbers from?
I did a bit of research, and while on the face value, the numbers are correct, they aren't really correct at all. There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.
The official number of homeless in the UK is 307,000 [1]. This includes "sleeping rough, or accommodated in temporary housing, bed and breakfast rooms, or hostels". There are only about 4,800 rough sleepers in the UK [2].
In California, there are 113,000 homeless people (2017), of which 88,000 are unsheltered, i.e. sleeping rough. [3, page 25]. HUD defines homeless differently to the UK Govt too, living in a motel or a hotel (if not paid for by the government) is not considered homeless [4]. So there's a whole category of people counted as homeless in the UK, but not the USA.
There are massively more rough sleepers in California than in the UK, even counting for the fact that the UK is much colder than CA.
Anyway, my rather long winded point is that it's difficult to compare numbers between countries, because countries have different ways of counting things.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/nov/08/one-in-every...
[2] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
[3] https://www.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/2017-AHAR-P...
[4] https://www.nhchc.org/faq/official-definition-homelessness/
Of course, child poverty itself is no joke..
During college in Utah I was sad each winter to regularly read stories in the newspaper about homeless people found frozen to death in parks.
After President Jimmy Carter closed the mental institutions in the 70s, the mentally ill people were just let out of the asylums without any plan or further support from the state.
Since then, homelessness has grown into a ubiquitous and rampant problem throughout the United States.
Especially true in sunny California, and doubly so in San Francisco. SF seems to have become the Homeless Capital of the world. A sad and embarrassing state of affairs for a "leading" first world country.
To be clear, the amount homelessness in California is not due to lack of improvement efforts. The City of San Francisco alone pours a quarter of a billion dollars annually into services for the homeless. Despite such efforts, more than half of the homeless in the city remain unsheltered.
"1980 President Jimmy Carter signs the Mental Health Systems Act to improve on Kennedy’s dream [JFK wanted to create a network of community mental health centers where mentally ill people could live in the community while receiving care.].
1981 President Reagan repeals Carter’s legislation with the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. This pushes the responsibility of mentally ill patients back to the states. The legislation creates block grants for the states, but federal spending on mental illness declines."
https://www.kqed.org/news/11209729/did-the-emptying-of-menta...
As far as California, specifically the bay area: it's a hell of a mess. Beyond people living on the streets, there is a growing group of people living in RVs. I took these pics near my office in Palo Alto a couple of weeks ago:
Illegally parked, but not homeless
Also: at least in Mountain View and Palo Alto, these are not all necessarily illegally parked. They need to be moved every couple of days, but at the moment, the cities aren't pressing the issue.
An American that drives relatively few miles over their life changes their life expectancy to be one of the highest in the world. It is a high impact lifestyle choice that I made a decision to adopt many years ago in part for this very reason.