EU:
1.1 million homeless people https://www.feantsa.org/files/Themes/Overview/2025/ex_summar...
Divided by a population of 451,990,314 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_European_U...
= 0.00243
US:
745,652 homeless people https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/2025-...
Divided by a population of 341,784,857 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...
= 0.00218
It's been 30 years since anyone sold a new carbureted production car in the US, for just as long cars have had OBDII, and it's been 50 years since cars were sold without catalytic converters.
There was a time, immediately after those technologies were developed, when older cars polluted significantly more than newer cars, but modern engine designs have been around long enough that cars old enough to be big polluters are expensive collectors pieces.
There may be an occasional car with a blown head gasket or piston ring polluting excessively, but they won't run for long in that condition. Thanks to CAFE standards increasingly limiting the availability of smaller vehicles in the US, the average 20-to-30-year-old gasoline engine probably pollutes less per mile than the average 0-to-5-year-old gasoline engine.
Downtown in US cities parking is prohibitive, but that is only a small part of the city. Most of the city you can park for free. You want to move the car every day just so it doesn't look abandoned, but otherwise this is a cheap way to live and you get transportation as a bonus.
At my current place (apartment in a suburb about 10km from the city center) our parking would cost ~180 USD per month. From a tech worker perspective it is not like unaffordable, but definetily a luxury for most of the population. The median after-tax income in Sweden is like 3k USD.
That tax I mentioned before also makes very old beat-up cars not worth keeping (which is the intent of the tax to be fair).
One of the main upsides of living in a detached house in Sweden is not having to pay for parking. But even so the increase heating bills in winter can easily cost more than a car installment depending on your HVAC and insulation.
Like god forbid some dude live out of a 2002 Town and Country that parks at a revolving series of strip malls eats a quart of oil every 2k.
The tent cities and the rows of campers are a different story (i.e. the density is the problem).
I think it should be permissible to allow some dude to live out of a 2002 Town and Country that parks at a revolving series of strip mall. I currently work with several people who use a similar method to keep themselves and their kids off the streets.
The phrasing might be bad in that I was pointing out the overall bleakness of the overall situation; no insurance, no registration, no maintenance, but the intent was to show that they are teetering on the brink of falling into an abyss that is very difficult to come out of, not that they were some sort of anonymous nebulous mass.
The main thing I have been struggling with personally with working with this issue (housing, addiction) over 25 years is that it is such a huge, seemingly unsolvable problem that no one is able to address systematically and when I think about the big picture I feel overwhelming helplessness, but find hope working in much more local situations.
The car comment was just an observation to the parent comment, with some additional commentary on how it isn't at all a big luxury, rather a bleak situation where the car owner is in a very precarious situation. Reading it now, I do see how it could be misconstrued as some sort of zealotry of people of a certain bent, but I think I am might be bent the opposite way of what you think!
When people are falling into homelessness, they keep the car for longer because (a) it generates income, either directly through something like Uber or by getting you to a job on time, (b) lower cost of ownership and (c) it serves as shelter in a pinch.
Additionally, rent can easily be inaccessible for the employed. And for those who don't have vehicles, 'just moving to a cheaper area" is not a practical option.
For example, if I’m living out of a car I’m more likely to use EBT to buy some bags of chips I can toss in the car rather than some cheap chicken and fresh veggies or eggs. How would I store chicken or cook any of it if I live in a car?
Yes, I know there are solutions here like small fridges and hot plates. But those cost money and require time and effort. Again, scenario is living in a car or the streets.
People repeat the myth that healthy food choices are expensive (they aren't) and time & space consuming to make (they can be) so often that most people believe it. But it just isn't so: you can eat at McDonalds every day, and if it's only a part of your diet, it's healthy. If you can get fibre and some vitamins elsewhere, and aren't overeating, the protein and calories in a fries and a hamburger are fine. Good, actually.
Healthy foods are simply principally marketed to, sold at a large markup to, middle to upper class Americans so they believe that's the usual market value.
Now, it can be expensive in time, effort and equipment for struggling, hard working, irregular shift workers. That's a different issue though.
Food deserts don't exist if you have a car in any American city since it is never that far to a suburb. (if you don't have a car getting is much much harder)
I have done the above - as a contractor working in a place a significant distance from home on a short term job. There were a lot of people like me in the cheap hotels I was staying at. OTOH, none of us were homeless - the homeless generally have other issues making them homeless and so even though that options would be cheap and work that doesn't mean they would be able to do it
There's at least one benefit to China dumping solar cells and other stuff all over the world: even as a homeless person... at least as long as you got a car, an EcoFlow Glacier and a shit solar panel are less than a grand, and it provides both a refrigerator, a small freezer and a way to keep your devices charging.
But that gear would have been infeasible even ten years ago - the status quo outside of luxury campers for six figures was absorber refrigeration [1] that needs a heat source - either powered by natural gas, which has challenges relating to safety as well as high consumption, or by electricity, which was lead-acid batteries back then.
The power density of lithium cells today is what makes that possible in the first place.
Poverty-homeless people however are a different thing, agreed on that. If you don't have a lockable place to store stuff you might as well have nothing at all...