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

41–50 of 360 posts

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

#41

Post by sharpneli »

flagrant wrote: post #30
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?

How is this hateful nonsense? Every citizen is eligible for that support. Do you perhaps live here so you can say it's not true?

Sure it's not always perfect, errors in bureaucracy happens sometimes but getting social security is the default. If you accept it you get a house.

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

#42

Post by Cloudef »

agumonkey wrote: post #39
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…

> they prefer to get drunk instead of spending it on food and rent Some are just deep into a depression pit. I agree that some people are just weak, but most people hitting homelesness went through big losses that damages your motivation to lead a normal life. Grudge, sadness, loneliness, grief, abuse .. don't conclude too fast.

The thing is that the "home first" movement in Finland states that home isn't a trophy that you get once you fix your life. Home and food is essential to get your life on track, and home is given even for alcoholic people. But if they don't pay their rent, and even give up on social welfare to pay the rent for you, what can you do?

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

#43

Post by jeofken »

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…

To be fair to the reputation of Romanians on HN, the beggars and squatters around Finland, Norway, and Sweden are not ethnic Romanians even if they often are born there, but come from the Zigeuner/Gypsy/Roma people.

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

#44

Post by ashcza »

jswizzy wrote: post #3

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

I highly recommend listening to 99 Percent Invisible’s new 5 part series on homelessness in America. Saying shelter doesn’t fix the problem is misleading, as it is typically a required component to solving other issues that person is facing.

https://99percentinvisible.org/need/

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

#45

Post by flagrant »

sharpneli wrote: post #41
flagrant wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

How is this hateful nonsense? Every citizen is eligible for that support. Do you perhaps live here so you can say it's not true? Sure it's not always perfect, errors in bureaucracy happens sometimes but getting social security is the default. If you accept it you get a house.

Without evidence, he stated that all homeless people in Finland are homeless because they would "prefer to get drunk". I don't think it's incorrect to describe this as hateful, because it's very clearly informed by a bias against homeless people rather than any real evidence.

This is the equivalent of jumping into a discussion to say that Black people are poor because they "keep buying cellphones". It's not a serious intellectual comment, it's cloaked hatred.

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

#46

Post by offtop5 »

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…

I'll say this as someone who's been evicted twice, the number one reason the vast majority of people end up homeless is because they don't have money.

This can happen for a small array of reasons, let's say you're in a bad marriage and your spouse leaves. You simply can't make the rent anymore, you're now homeless.

19 years old, and you're getting into really bad fights with your parents, you're now homeless.

Develop a medical issue in your mid-30s which prevents you from working, you're now homeless.

In my fantasy world we wouldn't even have evictions, instead a social worker would advise you that you're legally entitled to effectively a dorm of some sort.

>In modern western society we have many failsafes that prevent people from becoming totally dislodged from a place of shelter.

You're kidding right, when you're released from prison they give you 20 bucks. Awful hard to find housing with $20 you know, especially when you have a criminal record. A ton of people did do things which warranted a sentence, but we make no effort to reintegrate these people. So you did something bad when you were 20, you being 35 years old out on the streets without any hope isn't healing anything. If anything at all you're much more likely to resort to another crime of desperation.

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

#47

Post by SaintGhurka »

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…

To add some missing details on this, in 2018/19 the city council passed some ordinances that removed the criminality of some homeless activities. Specifically, they made it explicitly legal to camp in most public spaces (excluding parks) and they permit panhandling, sitting and sleeping on public sidewalks.

So there's a lot of "campsites" downtown. A lot of tents, or just people in sleeping bags on the sidewalk. A lot of people peeing against the buildings.

It's hard to score the upsides and downsides without starting an argument, but it feels like much of Austin has soured on the "decriminalization of homelessness".

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

#48

Post by Blikkentrekker »

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…

I have read stories about almost any European country wherein it is claimed that homelessness is a choice, and that there are facilities that the homeless aren't utilizing, because they præfer to the homeless or are plain stupid.

In many of those cases the actual situation is more complicated and the actual protocol is so involved and complicated that it is very hard for a homeless man to research.

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

#50

Post by Joeri »

Housing first is an approach conceived in the U.S. but for political reasons not as widely adopted as it should be. 99pi did a fascinating podcast series about the homelessness problem in oakland and how housing first fits into the picture. My preconceived notions of why people are homeless were definitely upended.

https://99percentinvisible.org/need/

Post reply on HN