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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

#321

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

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.

How awesome is it that anyone who becomes homeless in Ft Worth gets forced out of the city?

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

#322

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

devoutsalsa wrote: post #164
reedf1 wrote: post #17

It all comes back to a concept as freshman as it gets - Maslow's hierarchy of needs. How are you supposed to get out of any societal freefall without shelter?

One of the hardest things for me when I was in financial free fall was how little my friends could understand or help. They didn't understand that I literally had no where to go, and that me asking for a place to crash wasn't me simply wanting to visit at the last minute. My friends also weren't rich, so even if I could have stayed with them, it's not like they had a spare bedroom or guest cottage in which I could st…

No one I knew could provide a bed. I lived in my car. I was eventually able to trade remodel work for a chance to stay in the house.

That worked until a sibling & friend of mine, both w/ drinking problems, became regular, disruptive visitors and wouldn't leave. It was back to the car again.

I eventually escaped homelessness the same way everyone does. With help.

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

#323

Post by ACow_Adonis »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #309
ACow_Adonis wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sorry, but HN isn't a great medium for long technical posts :) The basic issue is that Australia naive measurements and numbers carry a three tier definition of homelessness: at the lowest level you have what we call "sleeping rough" which is probably the concept closest to what most people and Americans think of as "homeless". But the Australian definition also includes the likes of insecure accommodation and inappr…

That makes sense. I'm gonna have to dig into the exact definitions at some point, but I agree HN comments aren't a great place to really get into that.

there's also a couple of sources and differences: the main one commonly quoted is the ABS source, derived from the census taken every 5 years, and with specific practices implemented to try to accurately enumerate homeless populations. thankfully there doesn't seem to be enough variance for the relative infrequency to be an issue, but the other quirk is that census is done in winter, and contrary to some popular impressions, homeless populations can be highly mobile and show seasonal effects.

Another source include homeless service provisions, but last time I looked at those they didn't always tend to be on a individual natural person basis.

lastly, homeless service provision, with a few caveats, is one of the only things that might locally and empirically show behaviours of what economists call a "giffen good". And, somewhat paradoxically, provision of homeless services can, to a point, increase the percieved systemic demand for homeless services. increased supply can also create more (real and percieved) demand. the relationship these complexities have with trying to measure homelessness is tricky to say the least...

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

#324

Post by username90 »

oblio wrote: post #25
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…

This means that anti-panhandling/anti-begging laws will become void soon in several countries. This could lead to some interesting results if it's true that some branches of organized crime use organized begging.

I doubt it, that court have no enforcement power and Switzerland has direct democracy so isn't easily swayed by rulings like this.

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

#325

Post by username90 »

gfxgirl wrote: post #312

Lots of random thoughts but no conclusions * How much does the government have to spend per person? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_governmen... * What are the government's expenses? From that wikipedia article the USA has 80% of what Finland has per person. But I'm only guessing 50% of that 80% goes to the military (we can argue if that's good or bad. I'm just guessing that most countries get to u…

All of Scandinavia have similar programs but only Norway have significant oil income. USA has more oil per capita than Denmark so they don't count.

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

#326

Post by collyw »

esperent wrote: post #316
collyw wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone is particularly bothered by their race, rather their behaviour. (In the UK there are both Irish gypsies and Romani gypsies, both have a bad reputation).

On the contrary, in the UK (and Ireland) people are extremely racist towards both Travellers and Roma. They treat both races with equal contempt. I'm not saying this to excuse the negative behavior of the Traveller or Roma communities which I've been on the receiving end of several times. However, we need to look at this from both ends and accept that us (the ethnic majority) automatically treating members of a parti…

If a group has a tendency for bad behaviour should it be ignored because they are a minority? Why shouldn't the majority be allowed to call it out?

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

#327

Post by AmericanChopper »

r00fus wrote: post #266
HNfriend234 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you replace Republican with Conservative it works. Hell, our current President is debt-hating Conservative if you view it by the bills he's authored/supported as Senator in the past 30 years.

The new POTUS and VP were tough on crime icons up until that recently became unpopular.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/09/joe-bid...

https://www.latimes.com/local/political/la-me-ff-federal-jud...

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

#328

Post by blub »

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…

While this might seem like a victory for human dignity, it's not, it's just going to piss off the locals more and make them dislike foreigners, especially those from certain countries.

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

#329

Post by blub »

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…

Western European countries seem to be completely incompetent at deporting people. Illegal immigrants, terrorists, criminals, they fail to deport almost everyone.

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

#330

Post by blub »

usr1106 wrote: post #63
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…

Your claim would make some sense (not much, but at least some) if companies were panhandling at the train station.
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