> it’s weird to me see a public park that’s meant to be used by everyone taken over
That's what a majority of urban poor in India live on - public/unclaimed land (i.e. informal housing). They're not counted as homeless as a result, unlike in LA.
That's how LA can appear to have a comparatively larger homeless population, even if it's a lot smaller in reality.
In India this type of housing is illegal and can be destroyed by the government, but that rarely happens because the situation can be leveraged for votes (there's a lot of poor people).
I'm hesitant to call the slum population "homeless". We have people in the parks, footpaths too, and that's very different from people living in many of these slums.
Here are a few facts: some of these slums are 100+ yrs old. A lot of them have "permanent" homes, something lot harder to uproot than tents. And lastly, if the government attempted to destroy them, it won't be just poor people, almost entire society will be outraged. Something similar happened here in Dhaka.
That's what a majority of urban poor in India live on - public/unclaimed land (i.e. informal housing). They're not counted as homeless as a result, unlike in LA.
That's how LA can appear to have a comparatively larger homeless population, even if it's a lot smaller in reality.
In India this type of housing is illegal and can be destroyed by the government, but that rarely happens because the situation can be leveraged for votes (there's a lot of poor people).
Yay democracy.