Now, I'm sure this is a difficult thing to measure, and there's lots of room for legitimate argument. Nonetheless Wikipedia tells me that 248 Londoners "sleep rough each night", where 3-5000 of San Francisco's homeless population "refuse shelter". That's a full order of magnitude difference even ignoring the fact that London's population is several times that of SF.
And again, it gets to the safety net argument. It's not that the english are accepting shelter where the americans are not, it's that the english don't need to "accept" the homeless shelters in the first place because they are sleeping at home.
"A mixture of street counts and estimates indicated 557 people slept rough on any one night in London
5,678 different people slept rough over a year in London (April 1 2011-March 31 2012)"
"According to SFGov, the total number of homeless individuals and families in San Francisco for 2011 was 6,455."
There are definitely more homeless as percentage of population in San Francisco though.
248? In Helsinki I think I saw more than that passed out on a single tram ride. Helsinki had far more homeless than any big US city I've ever been to(at the very least they were far more visible). I also had more negative experiences with aggressive homeless there than I have had here. I forget the tram line, but it was the one that goes from University of Helsinki to Tooloo.
I've never been to Helsinki. But perhaps the lesson there is that Finland too has much to learn from the UK safety net, and not that the US doesn't have a problem.
And again, it gets to the safety net argument. It's not that the english are accepting shelter where the americans are not, it's that the english don't need to "accept" the homeless shelters in the first place because they are sleeping at home.