If I remember correctly, Poland and Baltic states have very low homelessness.
There are people that scour through trash bins to collect enough bottles. But they are technically not homeless since they live in old soviet apartments
Yeah but I do believe people on the streets. Many of thehomeless people have some mental illness or suffer from substance abuse. Plenty are aggresive. So sleeping alone on the street in the city center might be safer and calmer on average
I mean the bottle thing is something that is very common in probably all countries which introduced the bottle return "tax". In Romania I saw a guy with like three sacks full of bottles getting off the train. People, especially those with limited income, will not miss a way to get some extra cash.
And I think its actually a really good way of reducing plastic waste. Even though none of the people in my small town are actually homeless. You still see most people, especially the elderly, gathering bottles from off the ground and from their homes to take to the drop off. As much as I dislike the need for a financial incentive to get people to recycle properly. It’s undeniable the positive effects its had on reducing plastic waste in the area and I think its a programme that should be expanded upon.
This may not be true for Poland or the Baltics but in germany homless people are usally homeless by choice. And for all i know this should be true for Poland also. The safety net is good enough people just don't want to be part of the system.
its the same as where I live in England. officially there is only one woman whos homeless and its by choice.
The council and other places have set up rooms for the homeless. But theres a still a few beggars who gets a sleeping bag in the busy places begging for the money. Theyre nearly always alcoholics or on drugs, so you know where the moneys going., Theyve all got homes to live in.
But when people give them a drink or food they pretend to be greatful, but when they go all of the cups are stil full, and the food binned.
I stopped giving to the homeless for this reason. They would ask for food and then not not eat it. I was working on minimum wage and struggling myself.
It was so disrespectful IMO. You ask for something and then waste it. I could have eaten that day and instead I went hungry so you could be picky since you wanted cash for substances.
Now I don't give to anyone, I live in the balkans and I look ethnically ambiguous enough to look like a gypsy.
They don't ask for money unless I'm speaking English in public. They won't take from other gypsies. Begging is a profession (and it pays well, especially in cities).
According to this list, Poland and Estonia have 8.0 homeless people per 10 000 people, Lithuania has 14.1, Latvia has 35.3. This is while Czechia has 22.0, Sweden 25.9, Germany 32.9, Greece 37.1, France 48.7, UK 56.1 (so 7 times more than Poland). To their credit, Italy only has 8.4 and Spain 8.6.
EDIT: Malta has 4.6, Croatia has 4.9, Slovenia 5.0, Romania 7.0, Hungary 7.2, Finland 7.9.
UK is not in EU and you conveniently left out all the EU countries that do better than Poland and Estonia. Malta, Croatia, Slovenia, Romania, Hungary, Finland are all below 8.0 and Portugal has 8.0.
Poland only has low homelessness because all the Polish homeless people left to Germany and Austria. There are 15,000 polish homeless in Berlin alone and tens of thousands more in cities all over Europe. If all those people would have stayed in Warsaw, it would be much worse than any Western European city and rival some American cities for homelessness.
Comparatively definitely. The more socially conservative a country is the worse they treat the fringes of society. Really can't blame them for moving west.
Since the source is in german, I should probably explain it.
Bis zu 5.000 obdachlose Polen leben auf den Straßen Berlins
There are 5000 polish people homeless in Berlin. This number is, however, a point-in-time count - which means, it's the number of affected people on a single day. In order to get to the annual figure, we need to multiply this number by ~2,8 - 3.
Jeder zweite Obdachlose in der deutschen Hauptstadt ist Pole
Half of Berlins homeless are polish. In total, there are around 30.000 affected people per year so my claim of 15.000 polish homeless in Berlin kinda checks out.
They don’t lol they probably left Poland long time ago when borders were opened after we joined EU and ended up homeless for whatever reason. In 2004 a lot of criminals, alcoholics etc. left the country to “look for better life in the west”
Germany had very few homeless before the EU expansion of 2004 and Poland was by far the largest country that directly joined the Schengen area (Bulgaria and Romania were only in 2014).
Exaggeration and no source given, so it’s only a little bit partially true. It’s true that there are many polish homeless in Vienna I.e. but they didn’t get there as already homeless guys, rather lost their profit etc
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u/KarlWhale Lithuania 2d ago
If I remember correctly, Poland and Baltic states have very low homelessness.
There are people that scour through trash bins to collect enough bottles. But they are technically not homeless since they live in old soviet apartments