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

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

#181

Post by pbhjpbhj » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 9:00 PM UTC

Blikkentrekker wrote: post #48

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.

I find it almost incomprehensible the first time sometimes told me (in the UK) they were going to sleep on the street because the shelter didn't allow drugs. I don't think they were a particularly special case.

Victims of circumstance to some extent, but not stupid nor really living their preferred life I'd wager.

I suspect you need a stable caring society for a couple of generations and still there will be some outliers. A worthy cause to address though.

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

#182

Post by renewiltord » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 9:03 PM UTC

_abox wrote: post #180

missedthecue wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have real life data. Cities in California are spending north of $50,000 a year per homeless person (higher than finland's median income!) and the problem is still as bad as ever. The climate is also dry and warm 330 days a year.

With that kind of spending, how can it be that homeless people have trouble finding shelters? Sounds like a lot of that money is going to middlemen and outsourcing companies than the actual people that need it.

Unless things changed since I last looked, that number is obtained by taking the budget and dividing by the number of people still homeless.

So, for instance, if you had 100 potholes and paid $1 million to fix 99 of them, leaving a single pothole, this statistic would read: you spent $1 million per pothole.

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

#183

Post by username90 » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 9:06 PM UTC

cxcorp wrote: post #58

nabla9 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. This is very exiting. The ruling creates real incentives to attack real problems, instead of brushing them out of sight.

Unfortunately I would imagine that it's still easier to spread a narrative blaming the EU than to attack the real problems.

The beggar was not Switzerland's problem, it was a tourist.

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

#184

Post by watwut » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 9:08 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…

Some mental issues make you basically unwilling to accept that you have issues. And plus, we can't really fix mental health. It is not like everything would be curable.

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

#185

Post by WarOnPrivacy » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 9:08 PM UTC

Delk wrote: post #132

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They do have access, at least in theory and to some of the services. But when people do become homeless in Finland, their problems usually run quite deep already, and they may just be quite difficult to help. I don't know if this is true but I've understood that in the U.S. homelessness might more often be a result of just financial downfall, while in Finland homelessness is very strongly connected to mental illness,…

In the US, most circumstances resulting in homelessness are imminently solvable.

However, there is little community will to address those circumstance and a great deal of political pressure against aiding vulnerable adults.

To see strong examples political resistance, suggest moving folks in prison for low-level, mentally ill related crimes into in-patient facilities - redirecting per-person funding from prison budgets to pay for their care.

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

#186

Post by giantg2 » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 9:11 PM UTC

thehappypm wrote: post #154

zehaeva wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do hear about it more in warmer cities, but the city with the largest homeless population is actually NYC by quite a large margin. https://www.usnews.com/news/cities/slideshows/cities-with-th...

Per capita? NYC is 2x larger than any other city.

LA/Los Angeles county (what the prior link uses) is a little larger than NYC, 10 million vs 8 million respectively.

I would also be interested in per capita per city. Even more so for aggregates of cold vs warm cities overall.

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

#187

Post by chongli » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 9:12 PM UTC

agumonkey wrote: post #52

Cloudef wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I think it's unrelated, people like that are not ready to function 'normally', they need a shelter, asylum, hospital. It's an emotional problem more than material.

There are other approaches to treating people with drug and alcohol addictions than trying to get them to quit. One is harm reduction. This has most famously been used to help people with IV drug addictions, in the form of safe injection sites.

It can also be used for alcoholism: you provide a bar-like setting where people can go to get free drinks (rationed and served on a schedule by a trained server) and also socialize.

If this is coupled with free housing, food, medical care, and therapy, it stands a good chance of helping people where involuntary hospitalization might have failed.

I’ve volunteered serving free meals to homeless people in a restaurant style setting. People get their choice of appetizer, entree, salad, and dessert. Volunteers wait tables and then sit down to eat with people at the end of their shift. I’ve had some amazing conversations with people who have all kinds of experiences to share. It’s amazing how much of a difference it makes when you treat people like a person rather than a problem to solve.

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

#188

Post by barbacoa » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 9:12 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #179

barbacoa wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth noting, before the city council legalized homeless camping there were literally zero tents.

Did you have no homeless people, or were they still sleeping rough, just without a tarp to keep the wind and the rain off their heads?

There was always a homeless population but they would stay in shelters or camp deep in the woods and keep to themselves. Now homeless are leaving the shelters and choosing to live in the streets.

since 2019 (when the camping ordinance was passed):

* homelessness has increased 11%

* Un-sheltered homelessness is up 45%

* Numbers in shelters and transitional housing is down 20%

https://www.statesman.com/news/20200519/austin-sees-11-incre...

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

#189

Post by BitwiseFool » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 9:13 PM UTC

Blikkentrekker wrote: post #48

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.

There are absolutely some homeless people who choose to reject housing assistance and shelter programs. I know because I did some volunteering to help the homeless and met a handful of individuals that were happy to accept donations but refused to be committed to any program. They refused to have rules imposed on them by the shelters and preferred the freedom of doing as they please. One of these individuals has been homeless since the late 80's and seems quite content with his lifestyle. I'm not claiming this is typical, but there are certainly more people like him out there.

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

#190

Post by _abox » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 9:16 PM UTC

Youden wrote: post #147

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…

I agree with the sentiment but based on the text of the ruling, I can't agree with the ruling itself [0]. Missing from your summary is: - "The applicant, Violeta-Sibianca Lăcătuş, is a Romanian national who was born in 1992 and lives in Bistrita-Nasaud (Romania)." - "In 2011 Ms Lăcătuş, who was unable to find work, began asking for charity in Geneva." Why was somebody who "lives in" Romania begging in Geneva? Would s…

> Why was somebody who "lives in" Romania begging in Geneva? Would she not have received social benefits in Romania? This looks like a perverse kind of tourism. Refugees and asylum seekers I can understand but Romania isn't a warzone or dictatorship, it's an EU member state.

Social benefits in Romania are miserable compared to other EU countries. And cost of living in the cities is going up due to business booming. I've seen families with kids sleep on the streets there. It's really sad.

A well educated retired teacher who was begging in Bucharest whom I spoke to for an hour explained it to me. She was very smart and well aware of world politics (and excellent English) but she just couldn't make ends meet. Definitely not an alcoholic or someone 'who doesn't care enough to get a job'. It's the old people that are really in trouble as they lack the skills to work in this modern world and their pensions apparently are worse than in the communist days (taking rent increases / cost of living inflation into account). Many jobs were moved from public sector to private and their pensions evaporated as a result.

Having said that, the young people do really well in Romania, they get good education and all the chances they need. Business is booming especially callcenters because Romanians generally excel at languages.

I wish the EU would start imposing minimum standards to welfare because the old generation there is really getting left behind. I saw people in the flat beside our fancy office who had no windows but just plastic bags hanging in their flat, in -15 C. While outside the Audi's and BMWs from the upper class queue up and the young people are the new middle class, the old are just watching it all pass them by. The gains of the new system aren't divided fairly.

I'm surprised this 28-year-old needed to beg though, their age group have the best chances.