You would think that in so called civilised western wealthy democracies that homelessness would be dealt with a degree of efficiency.
Not so, it is obvious that it is on the rise quite dramatically in Canada, Great Britain and the USA. It may well be happening elsewhere in Europe too, I do not know. Stories reported recently here. Four have died in Portland of hypothermia since the beginning of the year. They have 8 immigrants in hospital in Toronto. Stupid Africans who tried to walk across the border north from Minnesota at this time of year (-40 below) who have now lost hands, feet and digits from frostbite. Heavens knows how many have died in BC.
It is to be noted that many of the homeless, apart from migrants, are not all addicts but merely cannot afford the current sky high rents and have been evicted from owing arrears. They are sometimes still in full time work and living in their cars! Surely it is not beyond the wit of mankind and the local governments to provide some kind of low cost basic social housing that can be rented out on a not for profit basis to these people? There seems to be an extraordinary reluctance to do this everywhere.
I blame the chumocracy movement. Social housing has been sold, redeveloped or sloughed off to housing associations where all and sundry have had a snout in the trough along the way. Or left to private landlords to make up the slack. Very little social housing is owned by the state any longer. People are given notice to quit on an instance with no real recourse. It appears that if you are part of the indigenous population you can be made homeless at will.
Personally I think local government should be made to build low cost housing at their own expense by mandate for their own populations without expecting a profit as part of their duty to their citizenry. Also to administer such themselves without benefiting others. Immigrants should be offered a free one way trip back to their point of origin with no responsibility to house them. I have a great objection to people dying on the streets, we do not live in India! It is not a problem that is going to go away anytime soon with the laissez faire attitudes of the powers that be.
(One has to note that there are more deaths than usual in the USA and Canada as this winter has been particularly harsh in both temperature and precipitation.)
Boadicea's Chariot 
In the Federal Republic involuntary homelessness* had been virtually eradicated. Then, blessed Saint Angela invited hundreds of thousands of Gimmegrants in and local authorities started chucking Hunnish Chavs out of their council flats and delaying their acquisition by other Hunnish Chavs. Never mind that they’d waited years for a council flat of their own, some Pakistani who found life in Islamabad unpalatable had to come first in order to await his deportation notice in greater comfort.
It’s virtually impossible to evict anyone in Hunland and if they cannot afford to pay rent on a reasonable habitation the Hunnish State will make up the difference within reason. That is, a single 25-year-old can’t expect more than a small flat or shared housing arrangement, but if said person works and simply doesn’t earn enough there is no legal reason for her or him to be homeless.
In Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden access to social services for non-citizens or at least long-term residents has been drastically curtailed. Denmark is also increasingly less generous to non-Danes. The Swedish government estimate that several thousand EU citizens in the Kingdom are “vulnerable”. That is, they are without proper housing or access to basic necessities on a regular basis. It turns out that most are from bloody Bulgaria and Romania — gyppoes that their “countries of origin” are only too happy to be rid of.
*Whereas the British have historically kindled the light of eccentricity, Huns have favoured conformity. As a result one sees little functional eccentricity in Germany — at least outwardly. Rather, people tend to conform to certain categories or drop out of society entirely. There is a subculture centred in Berlin in which people willingly forego regular housing, favouring squatting in abandoned buildings in the outskirts of the former East Berlin especially. Members of this subculture survive on doing odd jobs or making crafts for sale as well as any hand-outs they can get. Three of my cousins are part of this movement. Blonde Adonis and I are united in our contempt for them. We both work and have little time for their antics.
I don’t know if the problem has worsened in Europe as immigration has increased. Anecdotally, yes but people have been sleeping rough in UK and DK to my knowledge for decades. New immigrants don’t seem to have joined them; they are housed.
Janus: In some instances it has. Illegals, entirely outside the social system, aren’t always housed. They have no claims on benefits and don’t necessarily even try knowing that they’d be removed. I observed some foreign homelessness in Zealand.
Yes, I’ve seen non-EU beggars at the main station quite often.
Janus: Gyppoes regularly make their presence known in smaller stations. They either beg or busk. They park themselves in front of cathedrals in Hunland and demand financial support for blessing us with their presence.