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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

#51

Post by arcticbull »

throwaway45631 wrote: post #47
arcticbull wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does size have to do with anything? Nobody's saying you spend the same amount or provide the same number of houses - you can scale it up to meet the larger population eh?

Of course size matters. Finland’s homelessness likely coalesces around its largest urban areas, as they provide the most foot traffic and anonymity (and homeless services) with the least annoyed population. Like in every country. So most likely Helsinki. If your pool of possible homeless is 5M and they gather in a city the size of 600k it is a hugely different situation than say San Francisco, which is 800k and draws…

Do homeless people not congregate in cities in the US? So just scale up the effort, I don't get it lol. You may have to do more in certain cities than others, and yeah the program may need to span states.

Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems

#52

Post by 27fingies »

01100011 wrote: post #33

Does Finland have a problem with Mexican cartel meth and fentanyl being dumped by the truckloads into its communities? To be clear, there are many types of homeless in the US. But the ones that get the most attention and seem to cause the most problems are those pushed into mental illness by drug use. And, yes, drug use does not always cause mental illness and many mentally ill are not on drugs, but as those of us wi…

> Does Finland have a problem with Mexican cartel meth and fentanyl being dumped by the truckloads into its communities?

All I hear are excuses

Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems

#53

Post by imgabe »

riffraff wrote: post #29
SanderNL wrote: post #9

I 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…

Worth noting: population density for all of the Netherlands 532/km^2. The highest density in Finland, in the Greater Helsinki area, is 421.8/km^2. Finland does have a lot more space. Still, Paris has a density of 690/km^2 and is not a hellscape, so the choice of not having more housing (and pushing down RE prices) is political, not a deity-given rule.

You're comparing two countries to a city. Paris has the rest of France for people to live in.

Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems

#54

Post by obscurette »

01100011 wrote: post #33

Does Finland have a problem with Mexican cartel meth and fentanyl being dumped by the truckloads into its communities? To be clear, there are many types of homeless in the US. But the ones that get the most attention and seem to cause the most problems are those pushed into mental illness by drug use. And, yes, drug use does not always cause mental illness and many mentally ill are not on drugs, but as those of us wi…

No, but Finland has it's own problems like the one with alcohol abuse. https://yle.fi/a/74-20010916

Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems

#55

Post by tempestn »

ddoolin wrote: post #21
pavlov wrote: post #8

This 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 so…

Just IMO, many Americans probably don't think homeless people deserve free housing, because they have (the taxpayers) have to pay for their own housing and also contribute to homeless housing via taxes. "Fuck you got mine" is real here. Just see the nauseating argument against discharging student loans.

Even from a selfish perspective, I expect "solving" homelessness would ultimately save money for taxpayers, when you consider all of the police and healthcare resources that go into it now, as well as the negative effects on communities. But it would take a lot of time and consistent effort to get there, and the costs would be a lot more obvious and direct than the benefits.

Not sure I agree on student loans though. The main reason I struggle with that one is because it seems to me to be a regressive policy: most people with student loans (though certainly not all) are better off that people who didn't have the opportunity to pursue higher education at all. So forgiving student loans benefits a chunk of the population, but does nothing for those who are even more in need (some of whom might have chosen a different path if they'd known they could have their debts forgiven). I'd rather see policies that can benefit everyone in financial need proportionally.

Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems

#56

Post by johnchristopher »

SanderNL wrote: post #9

I 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…

Brussels has 10-15 years waiting list for social housing. In the meantime private co-living is expanding (increasing rents for everyone). See https://www.brusselstimes.com/339953/tax-on-co-living-houses... and https://www.brusselstimes.com/230905/co-living-in-brussels-i...

Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems

#57

Post by bjarneh »

> And that led to an insight: people tend to function better when they’re not living on the street or under a bridge. Who would have guessed?

Reminds me of the old Fran Lebowitz bit about homelessness, where she says they insist on calling it homelessness, since that makes it sound unsolvable. You really can't buy people a home. If they called it houselessness it would be too easily solvable.

Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems

#58

Post by rocketbop »

charcircuit wrote: post #18

If this has an 80% success rate we could give loans to the homeless so they can buy a house and price that success rate into the interest rate.

If the state lets social housing be purchased then its stock of rentable housing diminishes until it needs to start renting out private properties, which means the taxpayer effectively paying investors' mortgages.

If instead the state invests in building a certain amount of social housing that can be maintained and used long term at affordable rent for people under a certain income, you would take inflationary pressure off the private housing market.

I'm not an economist but it seems obvious to me that paying private investors rent in order to provide short to medium term social housing is counter productive in the medium to long term, and it's something for example Ireland is doing a lot, contributing to Ireland's housing nightmare.

Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems

#59

Post by silisili »

I've lived all over the US. Sometimes, homeless are down on luck. These are mostly the invisible type, that you may not even know exist.

Then you have the crazies. Mostly harmless, but not productive in society so much, so kinda outcast.

Then you have the grifters. Harmless mostly, enterprising folk. They're out there playing fake violins in parking lots with their family. And staking out busy offramps with their signs.

My city now has mostly the drugged type. These are the worst, they are aggressive, hateful, and many times violent. I've seen people ask for money, then spend a few seconds sizing me up before just going about their day. For reference, I'm a huge guy, and I'd feel sorry for normal folks in those situations. One beheaded a woman in the parking lot of a Kohl's last year, for example. The city has mostly given up, and are building them little drug dens downtown so they'll stop bothering everyone, hopefully.

It's easy to say you want to be compassionate, and look for solutions. After living in it with the aggressive type, I honestly wish the cops would just billy club them and ship them off elsewhere.

I absolutely want to help anyone down on their luck and trying. And the crazies. And I feel sorry for them getting grouped in with the other category of folk.

It's not simple to compare homeless across a single city, much less different cities, much less different countries. There aren't a lot of lessons to be learned between the three or four types.

Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems

#60

Post by tpm »

01100011 wrote: post #33

Does Finland have a problem with Mexican cartel meth and fentanyl being dumped by the truckloads into its communities? To be clear, there are many types of homeless in the US. But the ones that get the most attention and seem to cause the most problems are those pushed into mental illness by drug use. And, yes, drug use does not always cause mental illness and many mentally ill are not on drugs, but as those of us wi…

This is also very much a problem which the US engages in its own way. Would the meth and opiods be sold under a state monopoly to addicts for the manufacturing price, the cartels wouldn't have a market. Why do I mention that? Well... https://www.concealedwines.com/business-opportunities-scandi...
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