Finland has slashed homelessness; the rest of Europe is failing • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by empiricus » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #36

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…

> the Romanian beggars you see in Helsinki streets. While Finns tend to use the term "Romanian beggars", this can be inaccurate and misleading. I understand that this confusion could have arisen because "Romani people" and "Romanian people" sound similar in Finnish and some of them are from Romania. However, many of them come from Bulgaria as well – a very large community comes from the Bulgarian town of Pleven seaso…

small addition which should clarify some more the issue: romani == gypsy

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

#62

Post by ido » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

jeofken wrote: post #43

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.

Investigating how Romanians often think and talk about the Roma people in their country may be more harmful to their reputation than thinking the beggars are non-Roma Romanians.

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

#63

Post by usr1106 » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 2:52 PM UTC

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…

That sounds like a reasonable decision.

After all advertisement is nothing but begging to increase the profit of the advertiser. If I really need to buy something, I'm sure I can do so without advertisement.

Advertisement, be it some marketing phone call, someone offering me whatever subscription on the corridor of the mall, and ads making my phone browsing experience super slow are a much bigger nuisance to me than beggars.

The amount of various form of soliticing might vary where you live. But forbidding everything that's a nuisance to someone won't be the solution.

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

#64

Post by sharpneli » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 2:52 PM UTC

flagrant wrote: post #45

sharpneli wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

He said mainly. No all.

You do understand that everyone gets social security as money if they need. The problems happen if they are unable to use that money to pay the rent. And yes indeed the main reason is some sort of intoxicant use, as they rather get more stuff than use the money for rent.

Legal debts are also not a reason not to pay rent, as one is protected from repaying them when it's about essentials. So that doesn't count either. As long as you're able to push the pay button in your online bank you use the default system. Only when that's not possible do you fall into the provided housing system. And not surprisingly drug use is a major reason for not pushing that pay button but rather taking the money and using it elsewhere. Does that honestly surprise you? What else could it even be?

That's why we have the second option with food stamps and provided housing. It's not perfect as people elsewhere have stated the obvious "Hey want to buy 20e foodstamp for 10e?". But still they get it.

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

#65

Post by Cloudef » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 2:52 PM UTC

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #60

Cloudef wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not familiar with Finland but to those people have access to mental health services? In the US, a lot of folks who are addicted to drugs and alcohol are written off as moral failures when in reality, the drugs and alcohol are simply used to self medicate and numb the pain of their lives. I'm not saying there shouldn't be any accountability for addicts, but the fact that we completely write them off as a society s…

Yes, they have access to mental health services, and even rehabilitation services, but again only if you agree to it.

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

#66

Post by itake » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 2:52 PM UTC

Synaesthesia wrote: post #29

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.

I’ve lived in LA, SF, and Boulder. Most of the homeless in these cities are not interested in being apart of society. They are perfectly happy with their lifestyle of mental health and drug addictions.

Yes, there is a minority of homeless struggling to rejoin society, but the (pardon verbiage) worst people have no interest or empathy for society.

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

#67

Post by bzb6 » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 2:52 PM UTC

flagrant wrote: post #45

sharpneli wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Are you American?

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

#68

Post by jseliger » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 2:53 PM UTC

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…

Most American cities will do absolutely anything to reduce homelessness except build more housing: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-will-do-anything-to-en...

California cities are probably the worst offenders: https://seliger.com/2017/08/30/l-digs-hole-slowly-economics-..., but even Austin is underbuilding relative to demand.

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

#69

Post by jeffbee » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 2:53 PM UTC

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…

Austin story is simple: housing is overpriced, they are only slightly behind the same process as the SF Bay Area. In the time frame you mentioned Austin housing prices increased by 50%, which is ridiculous. There's not another mysterious cause of homelessness.

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

#70

Post by iSnow » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 2:53 PM UTC

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…

>because they prefer to get drunk instead of spending it on food and rent.

After a certain point, alcoholism is no longer a choice or preference, it's a debilitating disease. And before that point, it's frequently self-medication for untreated mental problems. Consider this: alcohol is the only mood-elevating drug sold freely, of course a percentage people will jump on it if they have massive problems.

Not going to criticize the Finnish system as I know nothing about it, but probably the only way to get to those people is give them homes, food and clothing and try (again and again) to get them to reduce alcohol intake and/or get psychiatric treatment - and accept you won't be able to get all of them to accept that.