Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems
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Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems
#2Utah had a similar outcome; house the homeless, and improve 80% of cases.
I still bristle at the description “virtually end homelessness” - you buy them free housing and 20% still remain unhoused, is that “solved”? What happens next? What more can you do?
Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems
#3If you're literally homeless in Finland you would die during winter season? Could that be a contributing factor to the "success"?
Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems
#4If you're literally homeless in Finland you would die during winter season? Could that be a contributing factor to the "success"?
Is this not true in many US cities too?
Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems
#5Utah had a similar outcome; house the homeless, and improve 80% of cases. I still bristle at the description “virtually end homelessness” - you buy them free housing and 20% still remain unhoused, is that “solved”? What happens next? What more can you do?
It's a bit unclear exactly what the 80 % figure measures, but according to TFA it's the lower bound of the fraction of people who got housing fully subsidised and is now pays their rent independently.
Given that the homeless include people with serious problems, that only at most 20 % need ongoing subsidising sounds like a huge win to me.
Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems
#6Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems
#7Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems
#8This Guardian story gives more detail on how the program works:
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jun/03/its-a-miracle...
Common objections to applying this policy elsewhere seem to be “We’re bigger than Finland” and “We’re not ethnically homogenous like Finland.”
On the first point, 5M people isn’t really that small. It’s roughly the median population of an American state.
On the second point, well… It does sound a lot like “minorities don’t deserve housing”. I don’t know how it’s supposed to be a blocker.
Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems
#9I don’t know about Finland, but Dutch people already can’t find places to live.
If you are unlucky financially and need government housing you will wait years if not a decade or more for something. If you can rent something you will pay €1000 for a modest place in a bad neighborhood. Given that a fair chunk of the population earns in the €1500-2000 range, that’s not a good prospect.
Housing is not just something you give away that easily (anymore, if ever).
Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems
#10If you're literally homeless in Finland you would die during winter season? Could that be a contributing factor to the "success"?
Freezing to death is so unspeakably painful so that you will do anything to avoid that, in the olden days homeless people would sleep in hidden maintenance spaces or near heat exhaust vents in the most extreme cases. Dying of cold is so rare that it does not even warrant it's own category in causes of death statistics here but you could argue some of the drug/alcohol deaths might cover that.