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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

#221

Post by eindiran »

renewiltord wrote: post #182
_abox wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can use other metrics (eg the NHIP count[0]), but they point to the same thing. Under the NHIP count metric, SF is doing better than most metropolitan areas in the US, but even with huge spending on the problem, the number of homeless people continues to rise year after year. The per-capita count of number of successfully sheltered homeless people in SF (per city resident) is the highest in the country, but even still, I see dozens of completely unsheltered people walking to Bart from my apartment.

Eg Chicago winters are very hard to live through if you don't have stable access to warm housing, and the West coast offers a reprieve from that.

[0] https://sf.curbed.com/2020/3/4/21152501/san-francisco-homele...

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

#222

Post by vkou »

CubsFan1060 wrote: post #211
vkou wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think homeless people are choosing to sleep rough, rather than stay in shelters?

I live in a completely different area of the country, but around here the shelters are all very strict about drugs and alcohol. You can't bring them in, and you also can't be drunk when you arrive. That's one reason why folks here choose to not be in a shelter if they have another option.

Consider that millions of well-adjusted, middle and upper-class people, with jobs, children, access to doctors, therapists, friends, support networks, and, really everything they could ever wish for... Struggle with, and die from drug and alcohol addiction.

If those people can't stop using drugs, it's hard to expect someone lacking all of those resources to be able to do so.

If you make shelter conditional on sobriety, you're unlikely to get more sobriety.

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

#223

Post by danielheath »

_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.

Lots of reasons. A short list includes:

* Shelters not allowing pets - many would rather remain homeless than give up their dog * Shelters not allowing drugs * Social services officers looking too much like cops (many homeless have had bad enough experiences with cops to keep them away from anyone cop-like) * Spending on 'discomfort' measures (eg deliberately-hostile architecture to discourage people from being homeless) * Effective mitigations being politically unpopular.

For instance: cold-calling people who have just separated from their spouse to offer counseling substantially reduces the number of people you have to lift out of homelessness at very little cost. However, "free therapy" is a wildly unpopular suggestion in the USA.

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

#224

Post by malcolmhere »

ogre_codes wrote: post #208
Blikkentrekker wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Many homeless reject shelters because they would have to give up much of their personal possessions, can't have a pet, live under tight restrictions, and deal with theft from other homeless people in the shelter. Giving people small, secure apartments would solve many of these issues along with many emergency hospital visits and many other issues.

Many shelters in the US are run be religious organizations and discriminate against gay people, too. This is particularly a problem because LGBTQ make up a sizeable chunk of homeless youth (think: kids getting kicked out by parents).

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

#225

Post by thebean11 »

klodolph wrote: post #217
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #206

I'm in the US. I was homeless as a teenager (not by choice). I live adjacent to a major homeless community (not by design). My ex left our family to join the homeless community (she struggles with mh issues). I have some observations. We could sharply reduce homeless numbers here if we had in-patient mental health facilities (for non-wealthy), comprehensive housing aid and politically powerful job placement programs.…

Just an observation. The mental health system doesn’t have much capacity to begin with. Even for middle-class folk with insurance it can be very hard to get treatment. There is a shortage of mental health professionals which is projected to get worse. Psychiatrists are mostly doing medication management because that’s where they’re most effective. Following the path of getting treatment—everything including diagnosis…

> Psychiatrists are mostly doing medication management because that’s where they’re most effective.

I think it's money: insurance will shell a lot more $/hour if they do 15 minute medication appointments instead of hour therapy + medication appointments.

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

#226

Post by deadbunny »

darth_avocado wrote: post #207
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.

> People are only forced if they start being dangerous to other people Really this definition needs to be more strict. In San Francisco, you could be drugged up, throw needles and broken alcohol bottles on the street, openly defecate, and this behavior is still considered not dangerous. A better way to deal with this is to allow people to reject welfare, but if they do, they still need to live as a decent member of t…

> A better way to deal with this is to allow people to reject welfare, but if they do, they still need to live as a decent member of the society.

And if they refuse to "live as a decent member of society"?

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

#227

Post by eznzt »

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…

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

Equating begging with being poor is wrong.

Bothering others is not a human right.

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

#228

Post by eznzt »

malcolmhere wrote: post #224
ogre_codes wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many homeless reject shelters because they would have to give up much of their personal possessions, can't have a pet, live under tight restrictions, and deal with theft from other homeless people in the shelter. Giving people small, secure apartments would solve many of these issues along with many emergency hospital visits and many other issues.

Many shelters in the US are run be religious organizations and discriminate against gay people, too. This is particularly a problem because LGBTQ make up a sizeable chunk of homeless youth (think: kids getting kicked out by parents).

What is your source for that? Also, how do those shelters know the guy is gay? They have gaydars at the entrance?

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

#229

Post by jandrese »

e40 wrote: post #215
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #206

I'm in the US. I was homeless as a teenager (not by choice). I live adjacent to a major homeless community (not by design). My ex left our family to join the homeless community (she struggles with mh issues). I have some observations. We could sharply reduce homeless numbers here if we had in-patient mental health facilities (for non-wealthy), comprehensive housing aid and politically powerful job placement programs.…

In-patient services for mental health were decimated in the 80's. Reagan cut the funding and cities were flooded with homeless + mentally ill people. I was at UC Berkeley at the time this happened. There were so many seriously mentally ill folks on the street. It was sad.

It worked out great for Republicans. The spike in crime rates made their "tough on crime" message resonate. When you're homeless and mentally ill it's basically guaranteed that you're going to have fights with the police.

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

#230

Post by theshrike79 »

danielheath wrote: post #223
_abox wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Lots of reasons. A short list includes: * Shelters not allowing pets - many would rather remain homeless than give up their dog * Shelters not allowing drugs * Social services officers looking too much like cops (many homeless have had bad enough experiences with cops to keep them away from anyone cop-like) * Spending on 'discomfort' measures (eg deliberately-hostile architecture to discourage people from being homel…

99 Percent Invisible had a great episode on hostile urban architecture: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/unpleasant-design-hos...
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