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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

#121

Post by zamnos »

ekianjo wrote: post #101
tpm wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

ever heard of oxycontin? It was a FDA approved drug (and still is), a powerful opoid that probably killed hundreds of thousands of people in the US, because it was used to train any kind of chronic pain and turned normal folks into drug addicts. It was all legal, until the people realized what was happening and the FDA acted 10 years late. Legal opoids just lead to more dead bodies piling up, which is why many countr…

The US government half-assed it. They pulled the rug out from under a huge population, and then acted surprised when they fell over. It was clearly being abused, and needed to be better controlled, but in making it impossible to prescribe rather quickly, and to not provide any help to the addicted, the US government created this mess. Where are the massive social programs to get users off opiates, legal or illegal. Where's the bridge to getting better, a helping hand to get over the hump?

The rich can afford to take a couple months off in a resort in a tropical location, and then resume their now drug-free lives. The poor get no such luxury. They get fired, and then lose housing, and become homeless. Which doesn't lead to a good mental state, so they unsurprisingly turn to drugs even harder than before.

It was viscous and punitive to end the prescription of oxycontin that way, and it's resulted in problems that could largely have been avoided. But America hates the poor, so they must be punished for doing bad things.

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

#122

Post by Ekaros »

ben_bai wrote: post #100
EiZei wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Freezing to death is so unspeakably painful so that you will do anything to avoid that Unfortunately not, it's cold but you can endure it, and it'll make you apathetic, and then it's over.

Straight up dying from cold in one go isn't worst possible way to go.

Issue is when you switch between dying and not dying. Like frostbites and so on.

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

#123

Post by otikik »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #19

I lived in Finland for a while. Being homeless in that country is pretty hard core in the winter. Which is a reason that sheltering people there is not a nice to have; you either shelter them or you collect their dead bodies in the morning. It's that simple. Places like Helsinki never had a large community of homeless people to begin with (natural selection). But it has plenty of social issues of course. Alcoholism i…

> Shelters cost money and they have to be staffed and when they fill up you need to spend money on emergency shelters, which costs more money

Yes but shelters can be privately run and then a corporation can make a profit from that, because private companies are more efficient than state-driven things.

That a company makes profits more important than perpetuating the homeless problem, or waking up to frozen cadavers. Think of the poor stakeholders.

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

#124

Post by EliRivers »

usernew wrote: post #94
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…

[flagged]

What is it about the US that makes people choose to die so much? Are American citizens just more prone to wanting to die, or is there some kind of societal or systematic pressure encouraging people in the US to want to die? Or is the US simply especially, spectacularly inept at housing the homeless; that the US just fucks it up over and over in some way, making a real mess of it?

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

#125

Post by tfourb »

silisili wrote: post #90
kstenerud wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any solution not currently being employed couldn't work because the local issues are different in some nebulous way, and it would require careful study before making a hasty move, and there are all these special cases that are different, and it just couldn't work so we should give up because nothing will ever work even if it has worked elsewhere, and just club them all to death instead.

This is so dismissive. We have to admit and analyze the reasons for homelessness before we attempt a solution. Sometimes, people who do everything right end up homeless due to illness, rising rents, death in the family, or any multitude of reasons. If we gave these people free housing and resources, they'd likely bounce back and be fine. If we mix in folks who are drugged out beyond belief, who are violent, who have…

But who is gaining anything if the "drugged out, violent, no desire to improve" folks are living on the street instead of some government provided (or paid for) permanent housing?

The point of the Finnish project and similar approaches in other countries is to first get people off the street, because it is much easier and cheaper to resolve any other issues within the context of a permanent home.

Yes, some of the beneficiaries will still take drugs, be violent, etc. But they would be that way (or worse) if they were homeless and it actually makes it cheaper and easier to deal with these issues if they have housing. So you loose nothing by making housing available even to the worst or most intractable cases but you open up a whole world of opportunity for those homeless people, who just need a permanent place to stay to get their live back in order.

The worst approach to this type of problem (which most US cities seem to have taken) is to basically say "as long as we do not have a perfect, magic solution that resolves the homelessness problem instantly, we'd rather keep all these people living on the street, because heaven forbid we pay even one dollar of tax payer money to someone who turns out not to be 'worthy'".

Frankly it is a barbaric and dumb view of the world. Every government program (just like all private investment and enterprise) will include some waste and misadventure. Just accept that its not going to be a perfect experience for everyone involved and commit to constantly evaluating and improving the approach.

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

#126

Post by moomoo11 »

Are the homeless in Finland hooked on fentanyl and various other hard drugs?

Is half of their homeless population suffering from mental illness (stemming from and made worse by the psychosis from the hard drug use)?

Do they have an illegal immigration problem?

Is there a perverse incentive for politicians and their families to profit off suffering?

The situation in the US imo is not at all equatable to most of the world.

Hell I grew up in a third world country without running water and spotty electricity. Saw poverty like you wouldn’t believe but never saw junkies or thugs like you do in SF. I was walking around Market St and saw people dealing drugs and people just drugged out of their minds laying flat on the sidewalks. Horrible. Not to mention all the trash, graffiti, and other waste while brightly lit multi million/billion dollar tech company logos shine brightly above.

America needs to become a stern father at some point and just set their kid right. First get clean and clear minded, we have too many fools that have been voted into power by even bigger fools. Or maybe it’s just a SF/big city loony tune.

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

#127

Post by tfourb »

pyuser583 wrote: post #26
eyelidlessness wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First article I found said the SLC program was successful for 95% of those placed in a home. IIRC, the housing first program in Seattle was similarly effective. I agree that it’s not as exhaustive as some of the more boastful claims, but I think the better question to ask is why these programs have been cut in favor of far less effective and far more expensive ones.

Effective at what? I lived near a motel that was part of a “housing first” initiative in SF. People treated the hotel like home base, and still spent their nights howling. I had to move the screaming was so loud. Not to mention the drugs, human trafficking, etc. In terms of environment, it didn’t deduce things like human feces on the street. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but the neighborhood was mostly unlivable. That’…

Good housing first programs do not cluster beneficiaries but try to integrate them into "normal" neighborhoods and provide them with ongoing support by social workers, medical attention, etc. Just dumping a couple of dozen homeless people in a motel is not a great way to approach this, I agree.

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

#128

Post by ekianjo »

tfourb wrote: post #116
ekianjo wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They have made it "de facto" legal to break in to an empty, unused home. If you squat a home, proceedings can take years to get you out of there. Same for France

Not at all the same in Germany, but even as a property owner, I see some justification for effectively legalizing squatting in unused buildings. It would create some incentive for property owners to invest and rent out buildings, or otherwise sell them cheaply. Ideally this would be formalized and matched with a proper framework, i.e. municipalities can easily buy unused properties at a nominal cost, property owners…

> It would create some incentive for property owners to invest and rent out buildings, or otherwise sell them cheaply.

Property is property, you should be free to do what you want with them. Otherwise it's not property. It's like saying "you have a car, you need to use it everyday, otherwise we can justify people borrowing your car when they need one".

Also, rent controls, aren't they a thing in some parts of Germany like Berlin? That's what leads to poor usage of apartments, because if you own several places and the rent imposed by the authorities is too low for you to turn a profit, then it's not worth renting either.

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

#129

Post by pydry »

otikik wrote: post #123
jillesvangurp wrote: post #19

I lived in Finland for a while. Being homeless in that country is pretty hard core in the winter. Which is a reason that sheltering people there is not a nice to have; you either shelter them or you collect their dead bodies in the morning. It's that simple. Places like Helsinki never had a large community of homeless people to begin with (natural selection). But it has plenty of social issues of course. Alcoholism i…

> Shelters cost money and they have to be staffed and when they fill up you need to spend money on emergency shelters, which costs more money Yes but shelters can be privately run and then a corporation can make a profit from that, because private companies are more efficient than state-driven things. That a company makes profits more important than perpetuating the homeless problem, or waking up to frozen cadavers.…

Thats kind of why homelessness exists in the first place though, and is getting worse.

Providing enough housing to eliminate housing would bring rents down. That's bad for profits.

Taking away the fear of homelessness gives low end workers more negotiating muscle. This means hence higher wages and less incentive to work as hard. Again, really bad for profits.

This is why western governments feign the willingness to do something about it by half heartedly attacking the symptoms (e.g. drugs) rather than fixing the actual cause (lack of homes).

It's also why the media fights so hard to misrepresent the causality between drugs and homelessness.

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

#130

Post by timonoko »

timonoko wrote: post #89

As luck would have it, I took pictures of last ever homeless abode in Helsinki 2005. It was destroyed soon after. It is totally functional all-year-round, with good sleeping bag and oil-lamp quite comfortable. https://photos.app.goo.gl/MqwRWdgkN0oynyTw1 I personally would not move from this abode to Helsinki Mäkelänkatu homeless shelter, full of creepy drugheads and violent drunks.

It took only 3 guesses for ChatGPT to get close to the correct answer. Google was hopeless.

-- I believe the correct translation for "sissimajoite" from Finnish to English is "guerrilla camouflage". "Sissi" means "guerrilla" or "insurgent", and "majoite" refers to "camouflage" or "camouflaging".

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