Forgive the nitpick, but absolutely nowhere near 80% of Americans are encountering homeless on a regular basis. Homelessness in particular and inequality in general are major problems! I don't mean to sweep that under the rug! However, I don't think it's true that anywhere near a majority of Americans encounter homeless people on a daily basis.
Something like 80% of Americans live in an urban setting
Yes, for the Census Bureau's particular and
extremely loose definition of "urban" which includes what anybody in America would call "suburbs" and even a lot of places people would call "rural":
https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...The key TL;DR determination factor (there are others, read for yourself) is this:
In order for a block to qualify as urban, it must have a den-
sity of 1,000 people per square mile (ppsm).
That is
not a lot. I live in a very stereotypical suburb (everybody has a driveway, and a small yard) and population density here is like 8,000 people per square mile... nobody would call this place urban besides the Census Bureau. (For reference, NYC's population density is 26,403 per square mile)
I don't think I've ever seen a homeless person outside a major city... you just don't see it in suburbs or rural areas.
Again, major problem, it's just that most Americans don't see it on a regular basis... which perhaps is part of the root of the problem. Makes it easy to ignore.