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Comment by naberhausj | Hacker News Reader

According to Wikipedia Sweden has a higher rate of homelessness per capita than the United States.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_homeles...

These lists are almost always useless for comparisons since the definitions between countries vary so widely.

edit: Digging into the sources, the US has 6.4 unsheltered homeless per 10k, but Sweden doesn't even track unsheltered homeless, the most acute category (at 4.5/10k) also contains people in immediate access shelter/hospice.

I think it would be quite difficult to even survive long-term as an unsheltered person in Sweden, right?

Yes, come October-November all the way to March-April and it'd be extremely hard to live 6 months of the year in a tent on freezing temperatures.

This is a fair point. To Wikipedia's credit, I think it's adequately addressed in the article I linked.

I think a more general statement could be made. It's nearly useless to make comparisons between countries. The United States cannot adopt Swedish policies and expect to achieve Swedish outcomes. I'd much prefer we discuss policies for our countries in our own contexts rather than introducing comparisons between them.

The parent comment introduced a comparison, though. So, I think it's only fair to introduce some form of statistics.

Thanks for providing a more founded empirical interpretation of the facts! It seems Sweden has some edge on the USA, but the original claim (that it's almost impossible to be homeless in Sweden) still seems as unfounded as I expected.

As another commentator noted, I think climate is something to consider. I expect that you'll find higher concentrations of shelter-less people in more temperate (or at least warm) places. Cultures will evolve to prevent people from needlessly dying, but we aren't inclined to give more than the bare minimum.

> The United States cannot adopt Swedish policies and expect to achieve Swedish outcomes. I'd much prefer we discuss policies for our countries in our own contexts rather than introducing comparisons between them.

And this isn't what anyone seriously proposing for the US to take control of its social issues to do. The mention of other countries usually is just to show it can be done, to be inspired by it and forge your own way to solve social issues.

I don't know why it's usually taken in this absolutist view, where solutions should be implemented as-is because it worked somewhere else. It worked, get inspired by it and figure a way out of the hole in your own local environment...

Yeah, Sweden and the US are different, people are still people and have some overlapping needs, learn how others have done instead of this hubris of "we're different". Everyone is.

I'm not from Sweden but I'd expect homelessness there to be almost never caused purely by financial difficulties or unemployment. The vast majority of homelessness in the Nordic countries is either due to mental health or substance abuse problems, or a combination of financial difficulties and other compounding factors such as those.

GP probably meant it's almost impossible to become homeless in Sweden because of a lack of a social safety net alone.

That's exactly the case.

And one bit of Swedish society that is a bit invisible to the outside: it has an extremely draconian approach to drug abuse. Even though it's a Nordic country and touted for being socially progressive, drug policy here is extremely regressive when compared to Portugal or the Netherlands.

So usually the homeless I see in Stockholm are addicts (alcohol, heroin, amphetamines) that fall through the cracks of the system as they won't stop abusing substances which Swedish policies have no way around to help them, it's extremely punitive for drug use, as even use is a criminal offence. In the case you are taken in custody by the police they may force a drug test and if detected you'll be punished.

This all compounds to leave a marginalised population that has inadequate support to fight their addictions (usually caused by mental health issues) and kept in limbo between the streets and courts to be ordered to get clean.

Yeah that list is meaningless. You won't see homeless camps of homelesd, almost never see a homeless person and if a homeless person doesn't want to be homeless anymore then they suddenly aren't (I know of precisely one exception to this.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...

Sweden: 36 homeless + 7 incarcerated per 10k

U.S.: 17 homeless + 64 incarcerated per 10k

Yeah, don't believe everything you read on the Internet. That list has little to do with actual reality here. You won't see homeless camps of homelesd, almost never see a homeless person and if a homeless person doesn't want to be homeless anymore then they suddenly aren't (I know of precisely one exception to this.)

All that list means is the US vastly under-counts actual homeless people. This is the same well known effect we see in suicide statistics: Sweden just keeps far more accurate statistics.

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