Not sure which country you’re referring to.
In September 2023, He Keng, a former deputy head of the National Bureau of Statistics, said that unfinished and finished-but-vacant apartment projects in China could conceivably house the entire Chinese population of 1.4 billion. (1)
there are more vacant homes that homeless people in my country and that fact is so incendiary to our sensibilities that it enshitifies things like google so; when you look up this fact; all of the results are going to lead you to explanations as to why it’s misleading and that there aren’t enough “appropriate” homes for homeless people.
all of the articles are hoping couch the unspoken classism divisions as “nuanced arguments” so when they say that there aren’t enough “appropriate” homes for homeless people; it’s dog-whistle-implying that homeless people don’t deserve the same desirable homes that can earn profit for the capitalists and that it’s the state’s responsibility to “deal” with them; amongst other dog whistles.
And what’s China’s homelessness statistics especially compared to the US?
Can you please share links to China’s homelessness statistics? Maybe my search engine is junk because I’m struggling to find any information later than 2011 (before some of the efforts to reduce it).
In 2024, home ownership in China is 93%, where in the US it is 65%.
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/07/10/why-are-there-no-slums-in-china/
How does the Chinese government deal with homelessness?
In the early 2000s, the issues of residential status, rights of migrant workers, and treatment of urban homeless people became a national matter. In 2003, the State Council – the highest executive organ of state power – issued the “Measures for the Rescue and Management of Itinerant and Homeless in Urban Areas”. The new regulation created urban relief stations providing food rations and temporary shelters, abolished the mandatory detention system of people without hukou status or housing, and placed the responsibility on the local authorities for finding housing for homeless people in their hometowns.
Under these measures, cities like Shanghai have set up relief stations for homeless people. When public security – the local police – and urban management officials encounter homeless people, they must assist them in accessing nearby relief stations. All costs are covered by the city’s fiscal budget. For example, the relief management station in Putuo District (with the fourth lowest per capita GDP of Shanghai’s 16 districts and a resident population of 1.24 million), provided shelter and relief to an average of 24.3 homeless people a month from June 2022 to April 2023, which could include repeated cases.
Relief stations provide homeless people with food and basic accommodations, help those who are seriously ill access healthcare, assist them to return to the locations of their household registration by contacting their relatives or the local government, and arrange free transportation home when needed.
Upon returning home, the local county-level government is responsible to help the homeless people, including contacting relatives for care and finding local employment. For a very small number of people who are elderly, have disabilities, or do not have relatives nor the ability to work, the local township people’s government, or the Party-run street office, will provide national support for them in accordance with the “method of providing for extremely impoverished persons”, which is stipulated in the 2014 “Interim Measures for Social Assistance”. The content of the support includes providing basic living conditions, giving care to impoverished individuals who cannot take care of themselves, providing treatment for diseases, and handling funeral affairs, etc.
This series of relief management measures ensure that administrative law enforcement personnel in the city do not simply expel homeless people from the city, but must guarantee that they receive proper assistance, in terms of housing, work, and support systems.
