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Comment by chrisseaton | Hacker News Reader

> First please note that America has fewer homeless people than many European nations or Canada

Wow that's a real reality check right there. I would have never guessed that Sweden had 2x the homeless of the US. Thank you.

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Same with France. Lived there for most of my life and the US is a culture shock when it comes to homelessness. I’m confused by these numbers.

In some cities there are large concentrations of homeless people while in other parts of the country they are rare to encounter. Those large concentrations are regularly talked about by activists and the news media.

I think this is probably correct. The last time I've even seen an obviously homeless person was in SF, and I haven't been there in 2 years.

I live in a purplish city in a reddish state that never makes national news for homelessness, and something's gotten way, way worse about homelessness in this city over the last decade. Even out in the 'burbs, where you never used to see homeless people. All over. I hear there are some long-term tent camps in parts of the city, too, which are new in the last couple years.

There have long been migrant camps around Calais filled with people trying to reach the UK. I don't know if they've ever been accurately counted.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-calais-id...

I don't know how valid those stats are but those are per capita numbers not absolute numbers, so not twice as many total homeless:

Sweden: 10,230,000/10,000*36 = 36,828 homeless

US: 328,200,000/10,000*17 = 649,740 homeless

> those are per capita numbers not absolute numbers

Of course they are. Why would you use anything else to compare countries?

I think the comment was in response to your phrasing:

> 2x the homeless of the US.

to me that reads as total homeless population, not a function of population.

Your comment as written was unclear. I was trying to provide clarity.

For comparison: there are single neighbourhoods in California with >36k homeless. Congregation is the real issue.

We can flip that around and say US has much more housed people when you use absolute numbers.

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