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

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

#231

Post by jandrese » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 10:40 PM UTC

eindiran wrote: post #221

renewiltord wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I wonder if any of the factor is that affordable housing in SF is extremely difficult to find? Especially if you don't have access to a vehicle for commutes and have to find housing in an area well served by public transit?

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

#232

Post by throwawayboise » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 10:41 PM UTC

deadbunny wrote: post #226

darth_avocado wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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"?

Then take them out of society. Same as any other person who persistently refuses to obey laws.

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

#233

Post by 650REDHAIR » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 10:42 PM UTC

austincheney wrote: post #145

jeffbee wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think that must be an oversimplification. Fort Worth just to the north is growing at the same speed as Austin. My house has doubled in value in the last 11 years. Yet, Fort Worth is extremely anti-homeless in its city ordinances and we don't have a visible homeless problem. As Fort Worth is a giant city in a warm climate I am sure there is a homeless problem, but we residents don't have to see it.

What do the jails look like?

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

#234

Post by HNfriend234 » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 10:45 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #229

e40 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Tough on crime isn't purely a republican stance though. Democrats worked hand-in-hand with republicans in the late 1980s to push through many tough on crime policies. This was due to crime skyrocketing in the 1980s due to cheap and abundant crack cocaine flooding America's streets.

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

#235

Post by deadbunny » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 10:46 PM UTC

throwawayboise wrote: post #232

deadbunny wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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"?

Then take them out of society. Same as any other person who persistently refuses to obey laws.

From the GP:

> Otherwise, it just ends up in a slippery slope that creates a sinkhole of billions of dollars in costs to the economy, at the expense of others.

So given that is it better to try and help them reintegrate with society or do we just lock them up and forget about them? Or worse?

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

#236

Post by arrosenberg » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 10:48 PM UTC

klondike_ wrote: post #219

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.…

Inpatient mental hospitals used to be in every state. They housed not only the mentally ill but also the chronically homeless and other outcasts. As the advent of antipsychotics and antidepressants reduced their population, these hospitals were an obvious target for budget cuts throughout the 80s and 90s. They money for the community health centers that were supposed to replace them never materialized, and thousands…

I'll never forget this fact because there is a King of the Hill episode (10:13) where a mentally-ill, homeless man named Spongy exclaims "Ronald Reagan kicked me out of my mental hospital!" and Hank bashfully tries to justify it as part of winning the cold war.

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

#237

Post by core-questions » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 10:51 PM UTC

deadbunny wrote: post #226

darth_avocado wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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"?

This is the hardest question.

I make a point of talking to people across the political spectrum and I have heard all kinds of answers, from things which are basically "stick them in camps" (from both left and right-wing people!) to "ignore them" to various rehabilitation approaches.

My view is that we should step back, and consider what it is that we, the folks who are the so-called decent members of society, want.

The city I live in has a big decaying area next to the downtown core, like many cities of a million or more do these days. It waxes and wanes, right now in particular in the wake of Covid it's very bad. Crime, needles, sketchy people, it's horrible. The thing is, these are neighbourhoods that should be nice; they should be full of young families living a walkable distance from downtown, not crackheads and needles.

I get that, as decent human beings, we owe each other a fundamental level of dignity. I am fine with efforts to feed, clothe, and house those who cannot do it themselves. But why does this need to extend to giving them a huge swathe of land, land that is potentially much nicer than any place I will ever live in, for them to ruin?

But what can we do - lock them up? Restrict their fundamental freedoms? Can we _really_ just ignore them and accept sketchy, scary, crime-ridden cities?

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

#238

Post by stevecalifornia » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 10:56 PM UTC

klondike_ wrote: post #219

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.…

Inpatient mental hospitals used to be in every state. They housed not only the mentally ill but also the chronically homeless and other outcasts. As the advent of antipsychotics and antidepressants reduced their population, these hospitals were an obvious target for budget cuts throughout the 80s and 90s. They money for the community health centers that were supposed to replace them never materialized, and thousands…

I would add that you are missing a major component for why mental hospitals went away-- public opinion changed. The public was made aware of abuses and such abuses were also dramatized in One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest. There was pressure to shut these down.

Separately, I will add that we need these hospitals back desperately. I don't know who will sign up for this tough job, but we need a place for the mentally ill to reside that is not the middle of the street.

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

#239

Post by CubsFan1060 » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 10:57 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #222

CubsFan1060 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sobriet…

Sorry, to be clear, I wasn't making a judgement either way. Simply that for many homeless people (I volunteered with homelessness organizations for many years), being intoxicated and sleeping on the sidewalk is their favored option over being in a bed and sober.

Whether or not this is the best situation, this was (and likely still is) the reality.

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

#240

Post by recursive » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 11:00 PM UTC

benlm wrote: post #210

ACow_Adonis wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

except we also have additional data from overseas. Australia has comparatively mild winters and my family is originally from Queensland where some of the "worst" towns for unemployment and disadvantage clearly have a bit of a "paradise" effect (that is to say, if you're going to live on unemployment, you might as well live where there's good weather, fishing and swimming year round and prices are a bit cheaper than t…

https://www.sbs.com.au/topics/voices/culture/article/2017/07... "Homelessness then, in Australia, is more than lacking a roof over your head, it is also the absence of those features associated with “home”: permanence, security, and the freedom to come and go." "If the world were to accept Australia’s definition and include everyone with inadequate shelter, the number would exceed 1.6 billion – roughly 20 percent of…

I spent ~10 years moving about annually from apartment to apartment. It wasn't due to lack of resources. I had no sense of permanence, but I would definitely not have said that I was inadequately sheltered.