What I believe he meant is that Syrians who live in a temporary refugee camp are counted as "homeless" by the German statistics office because they live in temporary housing and, hence, do not have a permanent place to live yet. And that statistic counted Germany in 2018, back when ~180000 refugees arrived.

That still leaves the same question, though. In the US, many municipalities designate certain areas as government-sanctioned camping grounds where "economic refugees" can stay while they don't have a permanent place to live. Does that count as "temporary housing" and can we exclude them from the homeless numbers as well?

Massaging the numbers seems silly to me. At it's core, we're talking about how to solve the issue of unhoused people that require government assistance. Syrian refugees were/are an unhoused population that required government assistance. US tent-livers are unhoused populations that require government assistance. It's perfectly acceptable to include them in the same conversation. If the strategies that were applied to helping Syrian refugees find housing can somehow be helpful when helping LA tent-livers find housing, then it should be part of the same conversation.

If I understand things correctly, the LA tent-livers are homeless and also unhoused, but the German syrian refuges are only homeless, but not unhoused. They have an apartment with shower, wifi, and a shared cooking area.

They are counted as homeless because they cannot afford to pay for their own home yet, which makes sense if you just ran away from a war. But they can apply for jobs online and they can shower for the job interview to nail that crucial first impression. The LA tent-livers can have internet and showers, too, but it requires a lot more effort.

I dunno the last time you went and visited a homeless encampment in the US, but many of them do indeed have showers and internet, too (sometimes provided by the government, other times just because these tent cities are legitimate cities).

I've seen a lot of tents with cooking areas too, and some even with portable generators, TVs, and fridges.

So can we exclude them from the homeless statistics yet?

Not yet. I'd add two more criteria:

1. Can they safely store valuables? If you have an apartment, it's reasonably easy to keep your laptop around. I'd wager that in a tent it'll get stolen eventually.

2. Is this temporary? The German government is expecting refuges to regularly visit the job center and to apply to job openings or to attend language school to improve their employability.

So if someone can shower, has internet access, can keep a work laptop without it getting stolen, and has been homeless for <5 years then yes, let's exclude them.

But my impression (based only on pictures in the newspaper) is that this won't include many tents in LA.

>1. Can they safely store valuables?

The camps in state's major cities notoriously have armed guards to prevent people from looting or moving the tents, and given that these tents already have all kinds of other furniture like couches, chairs, cabinets, etc, I wouldn't at all be surprised if they have lockable cabinets or drawers. One of the camps nearby has actually formed a "governing board" where they assign people jobs in the camp such as security, gathering more materials and food, etc.

>So if someone can shower, has internet access, can keep a work laptop without it getting stolen, and has been homeless for <5 years then yes, let's exclude them.

AFAIK the vast majority of homeless people in my state's major cities have only been homeless since last year.

So I guess we can remove at least 10k people from the US's homeless statistics now?

I do feel like immigrants (refugees, not citizens) living in official refugee camps should be accounted for differently than citizen homeless living in the streets of (say) Berlin.

Now perhaps this is not how the statistics were made, but I think some consideration or further investigation should be made.

For reference: Syria is the #1 source of people displaced due to violence, and Germany is the #5 host of such people. https://www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics/

[I see a sibling comment makes the same point.]

Normally when people talk about homelessness in the US, they mean people living on the street without any sort of shelter. Of course Syrian refugees count, it just seems like they are their own distinct case, as, for one thing, they are sheltered.

My grandparents on both sides, by the way, were refugees from Iraq under very similar conditions to today's refugees from Syria. I say that only because you seem to be very quick to judge others. A little bit of introspection might be in order.

If a person arrives at a country as a refugee of course they’re going to be homeless.

It would be more interesting to see stats on people who have been living in the country, because these are people who shouldn’t be homeless, but they are.