> But how come there are so many homeless people in the richest country in the world?
I think the replies to this thread and others offer a pretty interesting answer. I'm guessing, though can't confirm, that many of the replies are from people who live in America or a similar rich western country. However, the responses are all written as though the reply was written by someone observing the problem from the outside, "Americans don't... Americans value x over y".
Unfortunately, it feels a lot like "it's someone else's problem to solve" ... unless the solution is complaining about others not solving the problem. Or that supporting "public policy", higher taxes and things "The Government Should Be Doing" is enough (or even a good idea)[0].
But it's so hard to do something ... it's not. Find a good church. Don't like religion? Find a good service organization. The church I attend, every single Sunday, directly pushes us to "go out into the community". This place does it differently, in some ways, than others. Rather than a top-down "here's the organizations we support" with leadership running them, they encourage members to "go out and do" and if what you're doing is working, they -- for lack of a better word, provide the marketing[1]. They'll provide financial support, too, but it's rarely needed. Out of that, we have hundreds of small service groups, many of which were founded a few hours after a Sunday service by a "someone who showed up that day".
There was a woman at my church who decided to load up on supplies and hop in her minivan driving around the worst parts of Detroit to hand underwear, toothbrushes, and food to drug-addicted sex workers a few years ago. I don't know the latest count, but they were running 8 vans of them within a few months and several volunteers came from the streets the vans were visiting. We have several volunteer run groups that operate like Habitat for Humanity, and we have a rotating shelter staffed with volunteers. There's plenty of ways to reach out to a fellow human being who's life you could be a part of and plenty of fellow human beings who need volunteers to help.
They're doing something right, for sure. Best I can tell is that they encourage us to "take ownership of the problem" and "lead by doing" -- so these groups are all run by people who "go to church on Sunday" rather than "Professional Christians(tm)". They don't worry as much about people going out and "doing something that'll make the church look bad". AFAIK, it's not happened in the 20 years I've been there despite the approach[2], and many of our volunteers don't look like your typical "Sunday Best Church Folks".
My apologies if this sounds like I'm scolding -- I'm am, but I'm no better than those complaining about "Americans Not Doing Anything(tm)" -- it's been a year since I've done any volunteer work and as I've gotten older, the amount of volunteering I've done has been less and less. In my 20s, I was much more involved, and as is typical -- kids/job -- I've made a series of excuses that have kept me from being more involved. I'm tired. I worked hard. I don't have the energy to volunteer. It's stupid thinking, really. I've never left a volunteer activity feeling anything other than awesome and filled with energy.
[0] If the extent of your support for the homeless begins and ends here, it's worth doing a bit of research to determine if your support is counterproductive, or -- worst case -- if the program in question exists to employ a bureaucrat rather than solve a problem.
[1] That sounds really wrong the way it's stated, but my church is a multi-campus large organization. The hard part of any volunteer activity is volunteers. Though external funding is sometimes needed, money is very rarely the problem -- getting people's time is. A huge number of people want to volunteer but want to help doing something that they're comfortable doing. When a church has as many service groups as ours does, there's something that fits -- the tricky part is getting that information out widely enough that you connect the volunteer with the job (and make it one-click to sign-up).
[2] There's no organizations dedicated to anything political/picketing/culture wars -- they don't operate that way. It makes them a little unpopular with the "Big Churches" but if the established folks (most of whom lead dead congregations) are upset and can't articulate the reasons, that's a pretty good indicator that we're doing something right.