Are you sure those stats are right? It does not seem plausible to me that Germany has 4-5 times as many homeless as the US.
I looked a bit, and the numbers really don't match my expectations, I'm pretty sure they're not counting the same things. I found one paper that compares the US and Germany and they got a lifetime prevalence of homelesness of 6.2% in the US and 2.4% in Germany (https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1002/casp.724).
I know it's dangerous to rely on my own expectations and biases here, but the numbers are too far off for me. And I think it is very likely that the criteria for homelesness vary greatly between countries.
The OECD HC3.1. HOMELESS POPULATION has a note that says the German numbers also include people who inhabit temporary government-provided housing.
"Germany: Includes three main groups: i) Homeless refugees with an international protection status of more than one year (and eligible for job seeking allowance and renting regular housing in Germany, but still in temporary accommodation because they could notfind regular housing), ii) Homeless people without such a background who are provided with temporary accommodation by municipalities, and iii) Homeless people who are provided by NGOs with some type of temporary accommodation or are known as homeless users of their advice centres (without permanent housing and in contact with the advice centre at least once in the preceding months"
So it's "homeless" people that were "provided with temporary accommodation by municipalities", meaning it is a different type of homelessness than camping in LA.
>Anyone who has ever walked around SF or LA and Berlin knows this implicitly.
The easy explanation for that is the social programs that care for the homeless are stronger in Germany. You don't see Berlin's homeless as a problem because they don't have to result to literally sleeping on the street. The people living in shelters are no less homeless, they just aren't as visible.
If you're living in a shelter then you're not just less visble, you're also much better off. Obviously it's a problem to be solved too, but a less severe one than people who are literally living on the street.
>If you're living in a shelter then you're not just less visble, you're also much better off.
Usually, but not universally. Even when shelter space is available in a city like LA, it is not always easy to convince people to stay there. Lots of shelters have problems ranging from crime to forcing draconian rules onto the people staying there. In a place with a relatively comfortable climate like Los Angeles, some people legitimately prefer to be on the street. Their personal agency matters and we can't just round them up to throw them in a shelter. We need to improve the shelters until they are the obvious choice over the street.
Although social programs are better in Germany, that isn't the entire story. You'll see thousands of homeless strewn through the parks and along the banks of the Spree in the summer and U-Bahn stations in the winter. The major difference is the authorities dismantle and move any tent cities before they become endemic, unlike California. Belligerent behaviour is usually dealt with, meaning those that remain on the streets are predominantly harmless.
Neither LA nor SF nor even Washington, DC are representative of the US in this regard. Say, NYC does have homeless people, but you'll have hard time finding a tent camp with them. In many smaller towns they may be basically unheard of.
It takes a certain legal regime, law enforcement regime, economic situation, climate, etc to make a place attractive to the homeless. I suppose that neither Vermont nor Texas have a lot of homeless people.
I also heard of the practice of buying a Greyhound bus ticket to the homeless and luring them to go to warmer, more abundant places, thus physically removing the problem.
Also it's usually noted that many US homeless would be in a mental institution elsewhere; they are not homeless by conscious choice to be anti-social.
You should realize that California has the overwhelming majority of the homeless population in the US with almost a quarter of the entire homeless population living there[1][2].
You should also realize that SF and LA are two of most expensive cities in the US for housing - either renting or buying. As such Berlin is hardly a meaningful comparison. The homeless crisis in these two places is very well-known. Nobody is "cooking the books." Lastly California is not at all representative of the rest of the country.
I looked a bit, and the numbers really don't match my expectations, I'm pretty sure they're not counting the same things. I found one paper that compares the US and Germany and they got a lifetime prevalence of homelesness of 6.2% in the US and 2.4% in Germany (https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1002/casp.724).
I know it's dangerous to rely on my own expectations and biases here, but the numbers are too far off for me. And I think it is very likely that the criteria for homelesness vary greatly between countries.