Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Finland has slashed homelessness; the rest of Europe is failing

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 360 posts

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

#21

Post by giantg2 »

burntoutfire wrote: post #10
austincheney wrote: post #7

The city of Austin, TX could be a case study of what not to do. I was remotely employed to company with offices in Austin in 2014-2015 and it was awesome to visit and walk around down town. I always had a blast. I visited Austin in 2019 and there were homeless people EVERYWHERE. Every green space and nearly every street corner seemed to be littered with homeless people. The difference crystal clear. Something in the…

> Something in the handling of the homeless problem had failed in that city. Or, the homeless are recent migrants from other areas? At least where i live, the homeless all congregate in biggest wealthiest cities, because it's easier to beg, their presence blends in more and also local communities are more atomized so they don't fight off the homeless as hard as in smaller places. I've heard a story of one homeless gu…

Not only do they tend to select larger cities, but also warmer cities. You mostly hear about the homeless population in places like San Francisco, Oahu, Austin, etc. If you're homeless, you might as well go to a place where you're less likely to freeze to death. Although there are some homeless in places likes Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, etc.

Not to mention some cities will give them money if they take a bus to another city. Just shuffle the people around so it's no longer that current city's problem.

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

#22

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#23

Post by finiteseries »

austincheney wrote: post #7

The city of Austin, TX could be a case study of what not to do. I was remotely employed to company with offices in Austin in 2014-2015 and it was awesome to visit and walk around down town. I always had a blast. I visited Austin in 2019 and there were homeless people EVERYWHERE. Every green space and nearly every street corner seemed to be littered with homeless people. The difference crystal clear. Something in the…

2019 levels would be an improvement given what’s gone on in 2020, the pandemic has made everything much, much worse.

A progression of one of the camps from Jan 2020 to Aug 2020 https://youtu.be/xbsXgU6PO6U

Downtown Austin a few weeks ago: https://youtu.be/aDvqut1zLso

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

#24

Post by naavis »

u678u wrote: post #18

In areas of the USA with the population density of Finland there isn't much (any?) homelessness either.

It doesn't make much sense to look at the average population density of Finland. Homeless people don't really roam the empty countryside, they are in the cities, probably much like in the US too.

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

#25

Post by oblio »

nabla9 wrote: post #19

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 o…

This means that anti-panhandling/anti-begging laws will become void soon in several countries.

This could lead to some interesting results if it's true that some branches of organized crime use organized begging.

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

#26

Post by Cloudef »

Delk wrote: post #20
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.

Those people are given help, but if they refuse that, there's nothing you can really do. People are only forced if they start being dangerous to other people.

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

#27

Post by Eridrus »

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…

Not to say the general approach is bad, but I think the cost side is overplayed. It depends a lot on what the cost/structure of your existing response is, and critically, whether you can actually realize any savings after the shift. Both because it is hard to reduce staffing/infrastructure, but also because many costs are not actually born directly by the city (eg medical costs are born by the hospitals).

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

#28

Post by guerrilla »

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…

How does that woman carry all the stuff from one city to another? Does she take buses and they just wait for her to load it all?

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

#29

Post by Synaesthesia »

adaisadais wrote: post #13

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 p…

It should be pretty elementary to solve homelessness, as Finland has shown. There's also no reason we can't have full employment. The Soviet Union had it.

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

#30

Post by flagrant »

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…

> 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.

When you posted this hateful nonsense, did you think nobody would bring you up on it? Can you provide anything to back up this assertion?

Post reply on HN