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Comment by kalaksi | Hacker News Reader

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kalaksi·

> western homeless crisis

Haven't really heard about this crisis. Are you referring to the US?

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Global, I guess. It has a wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_crisis

There's specific pages for some individual countries, too:

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordable_housing_in_Canada#A...

This one is about housing crisis, not "western homeless crisis".

At least in Europe it is not (yet?) causing very large scale of homelessness problem.

I find the name "housing crisis" misleading, because if I look at average floor area per capita, I think we should call this "expectations changed faster than buildings". For example https://doi.org/10.2908/ILC_HCMH01 (variation between 43 to 141).

I'd say it's a bit more complex as you have to deal with capital financing and a number of regulations like parking in cities that lead to issues.

This is primarily an anglophone board so they are (perhaps inaccurately) referring to the Anglosphere which has far worse housing performance than elsewhere https://www.ft.com/content/dca3f034-bfe8-4f21-bcdc-2b274053f...

The US and Canada (and to some extent elsewhere) have been experiencing a lot of homelessness and open air drug use due to fentanyl, housing unaffordability, and "community" mental health treatment rather than "mental hospitals."

US, Canada, Australia[1], Ireland [2], and many other places.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9vg923vkdko [2] https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/housing-planning/2025/03/...

Berlin, London, Amsterdam, Stockholm all have it.

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