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Finland has slashed homelessness; the rest of Europe is failing

economist.com

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Re: Finland has slashed homelessness; the rest of Europe is failing

#11

Post by jedimastert »

jswizzy wrote: post #3

Anyone who thinks that just giving the homeless shelter fixes the problem doesn't understand the problem to begin with.

No, but it's almost impossible to get out of homelessness without it. It's really hard to do anything more with your day if you have to spend most of it making sure you have enough calories and a "safe" place to sleep.

This doesn't fix everything, but there is a not-as-small-as-you-might-think subset of people for whom the only reason they continue to be homeless is they can't do anything other than figure out what they're gonna eat that day

Re: Finland has slashed homelessness; the rest of Europe is failing

#12

Post by devoutsalsa »

jswizzy wrote: post #3

Anyone who thinks that just giving the homeless shelter fixes the problem doesn't understand the problem to begin with.

There are a lot of reasons to be homeless and not want to stay in a homeless shelter. A big one is security. When I was homeless and learning to code, I couldn’t afford to replace my laptop. People told me that if I stayed in a homeless shelter, there was a good chance my laptop would be stolen. I chose not to stay in one for that reason alone.

A few years later, I offered to let a homeless coding student stay with me for a couple weeks while she got housing lined up. She didn’t have one of her own, so I gave her my old MacBook Air. She made arrangements to stay in a shelter, left my place, and her laptop was stolen within a week.

Safety & security matter, and any solution that is going to effectively address homelessness needs to take this into account.

Re: Finland has slashed homelessness; the rest of Europe is failing

#13

Post by adaisadais »

Homelessness does not beget homelessness. It is most important to note that. Our society is so focused at solving the primary symptoms without ever diving deeper into the root cause of things like this (looking at you Sf).

To experience homelessness one must have first experienced a reason to now be homeless. In modern western society we have many failsafes that prevent people from becoming totally dislodged from a place of shelter. But more and more people are losing such shelter and are ending up on our streets. Why?

The answer is often rooted in the human condition. Solving that is almost impossible... but it’s worth trying.

Re: Finland has slashed homelessness; the rest of Europe is failing

#14

Post by lostcolony »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #5
jswizzy wrote: post #3

Anyone who thinks that just giving the homeless shelter fixes the problem doesn't understand the problem to begin with.

The evidence, from Utah (Salt Lake City also attempted and was somewhat successful with Housing First) to Finland says otherwise. Housing the homeless is cheaper and gets them stability to address the core issues (addiction, job placement, etc) with social services (which is incredibly difficult when folks are transient and sleeping rough). With that said: > Meanwhile, illegal immigration creates a homeless populatio…

That same issue applies to different states. It always makes me roll my eyes when conservative pundits point to blue states' homelessness as a reason why socially liberal policies fail; no, but social policies will attract people needing them from anywhere accessible that doesn't have those policies. Hence why it needs to be done at a national level.

Re: Finland has slashed homelessness; the rest of Europe is failing

#15

Post by crazypython »

As soon as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25903259 was posted, two posts in /new, it helped bring this one, got to the front page:

26. Show HN: Rust-starter, a boilerplate to build Rust CLI applications (github.com/rust-starter) 18 points by csomar 19 minutes ago | flag | hide | past | 6 comments

27. Finland has slashed homelessness; the rest of Europe is failing (economist.com) 30 points by ashergill 19 minutes ago | flag | hide | past | 11 comments

28. The Reasons I’m Joining BIGtoken as CEO (medium.com/crypto-oracle) 3 points by simonebrunozzi 19 minutes ago | flag | hide | past | 1 comment

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Re: Finland has slashed homelessness; the rest of Europe is failing

#16

Post by dbattaglia »

jswizzy wrote: post #3

Anyone who thinks that just giving the homeless shelter fixes the problem doesn't understand the problem to begin with.

That's kind of a strong statement to make without some explanation. I'm curious, what is the core of the problem you are referencing that free shelter doesn't "fix"? Mental health, addiction, something else entirely?

Re: Finland has slashed homelessness; the rest of Europe is failing

#19

Post by nabla9 »

Related news: European Court of Human Rights just made important ruling that decriminalizes begging. Making it criminal to be poor is against human rights.

-----

ECHR 021 (2021)

19.01.2021

(Judgment Lacatus v. Switzerland)

The penalty imposed on the applicant for begging in public breached the Convention

In today’s Chamber judgment 1 in the case of Lăcătuşv. Switzerland (application no. 14065/15) the European Court of Human Rights held, unanimously, that there had been:

a violation of Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life)of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The case concerned an order for the applicant to pay a fine of 500 Swiss francs (CHF) (approximately 464 euros (EUR)) for begging in public in Geneva, and her detention in a remand prison for five days for failure to pay the fine.

The Court observed that the applicant, who was illiterate and came from an extremely poor family, had no work and was not in receipt of social benefits. Begging constituted a means of survival for her. Being in a clearly vulnerable situation, the applicant had had the right, inherent in human dignity, to be able to convey her plight and attempt to meet her basic needs by begging.

The Court considered that the penalty imposed on the applicant had not been proportionate either to the aim of combating organised crime or to the aim of protecting the rights of passers-by, residents and shopkeepers.

The Court did not subscribe to the Federal Court’s argument that less restrictive measures would not have achieved a comparable result.In the Court’s view, the penalty imposed had infringed the applicant’s human dignity and impaired the very essence of the rights protected by Article 8 of the Convention, and the State had thus overstepped its margin of appreciation in the present case.

Re: Finland has slashed homelessness; the rest of Europe is failing

#20

Post by Delk »

Cloudef wrote: post #6

Note that the "homeless" people in Finland are mainly people who refuse to accept support from the social welfare, this is because they prefer to get drunk instead of spending it on food and rent. The social welfare eventually suggests a different system for such people: pay the rent for them and give a special card that can be used for anything except alcohol and cigarette. If the people keep refusing that other opt…

While there's truth to that, it's worth noting that most of those homeless people are suffering from ill mental health and/or substance dependence.

You make it sound like they just shrugged and decided that that's the life they want, but I don't think that's how people end up homeless. There are decisions involved, but they're probably not quite as voluntary as that.

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