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Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

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Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#91

Post by segasaturn »

stevenicr wrote: post #56
JamesLeonis wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 10 million empty homes [0] and ~700,000 homeless. No matter how you slice those numbers you still have more empty housing stock than homeless right now. [0]: https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/currenthvspress.pdf (page 4)

My first read of this document leads me to believe that there are only about 341,000 housing units available for rent, there are some for sale at an average price of $373,000.. but many or most of the empty housing units are like second homes and such and not 'available'. So we have 350k open units and 700k people without homes, average rent is around $1500.. just looking at the data my guess is that we have about 70…

Those houses sitting empty with no-one in them is exactly why the price of rent is so high. The supply is there but it's being hoarded by 1% of the population. Write laws that would force people to rent out their secondary houses, condos and apartments (with the threat of having it seized if they don't) and watch the prices immediately start to fall.

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#92

Post by andrewla »

Without digging too deep into the nature of the statistics they use, I'm a little skeptical of this.

The transition to using the word "homeless" has resulted in transforming something we can't easily measure -- "drug addicted or mentally ill people being a public menace" -- into something that we can measure -- "people without a good living arrangement".

Sure, the latter is important in a lot of ways too. And there housing is a tolerable solution.

But the former is the actual problem that we care about. It's nearly impossible to measure. It's nearly impossible to fix. The horrors of involuntary commitment vs. the horrors of not having involuntary commitment vs. the horrors of using the criminal justice system vs. the horrors of not using the criminal justice system.

The fact is that we have no real model for treatment of severely mentally ill people. We have a number of effective drugs, but they rapidly become ineffective if not taken. Our ability to treat or "cure" people in these conditions is essentially non-existent.

The question I would ask of Finland before considering this data or analysis to be interesting is what is their state of involuntary indefinite commitment.

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#93

Post by markus_zhang »

TinyBig wrote: post #79
Scoundreller wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And don’t “fix” the problem at the expense of the paycheque-to-paycheque lower-working class. Otherwise it’s zero sum and you create a homeless for every homeless you remove and disincentivize work.

How would it be possible to fix the problem at the expense of the lower working class?

For example just add tax to shoot at the target, eventually salary owners get hurt while riches can get away with an army of lawyers and accountants.

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#94

Post by IncreasePosts »

thePhytochemist wrote: post #50

This issue is very relevant for me since I have been homeless since May. It's been a bad run of being a target of criminal activity, unemployment and just running out of money during my job search. I cope with a mix of volunteering, overpriced housing (think $1200/month for a room in a rural area before I ran out of money for that), catsitting, house-sitting, staying with family and sleeping in my ancient car. Althou…

With all due respect, why volunteer? I notice this with a lot of homeless people I chat with (there's a lot here in Boulder) - many of them volunteer their time at various charities while being homeless.

Wouldn't it be better devoting 100% of your spare time to getting back on your feet, and then volunteer, or donate?

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#95

Post by fooker »

TinyBig wrote: post #79
Scoundreller wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And don’t “fix” the problem at the expense of the paycheque-to-paycheque lower-working class. Otherwise it’s zero sum and you create a homeless for every homeless you remove and disincentivize work.

How would it be possible to fix the problem at the expense of the lower working class?

If you force owners to artificially reduce rent for a single class of properties (here: cheap flats made for the homeless) the rent for others go up a bit.

This has happened in several US cities.

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#96

Post by IncreasePosts »

octopusRex wrote: post #8

The US chooses not to end homelessness. We have the highest GDP in the world. We could end it if we wanted to. I was in Japan recently. A choice was made there as well.

How do you end homelessness, when some percent of homeless people will, if you give them a place to stay, smoke meth all day and make their apartment and nearby apartments health hazards?

Many drug addicts don't want to be addicted, and would try to go through treatment if provided. But some are inveterate, and don't want to quit. What do you do with them?

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#97

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #41
barbazoo wrote: post #28

> a “Housing First” approach, which provides people experiencing homelessness with immediate, independent, permanent housing Could timing have something to do with it? Maybe if the cycle is broken right at the start, when one becomes homeless, it prevents some of the mental health issues and addiction issues that come from living without support for too long. People here in NA often have lived on the streets for year…

> Maybe if the cycle is broken right at the start, when one becomes homeless, it prevents some of the mental health issues and addiction issues that come from living without support for too long What fraction of the homeless addicts or mentally ill started out that way?

Suffering from mental trauma does not mean that one cannot suffer from additional mental trauma.

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#98

Post by eesmith »

erehweb wrote: post #80
emh68 wrote: post #75

1. Build a house for each homeless person 2. Remove them from the homeless count, because they now have a house. 3. Reach zero homelessness! 4. There are still people living on the streets... But we don't call them homeless!

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. From the article, basically no one was sleeping on the streets in Finland in 2020.

I don't know where the #4 is from, but I can point to https://kritisches-netzwerk.de/sites/default/files/homelessn... with a more complete breakdown:

  Types of homelessness | Living Alone | Long-term homeless
  ----------------------+--------------+-------------------
  Temporarily living    |    2 773     |      522
  with friends and      |              |
  relatives             |              |
  ----------------------+--------------+-------------------
  Outside, in           |      721     |      186
  stairwells, in        |              |
  temporary             |              |
  shelters, etc.        |              |
  ----------------------+--------------+-------------------
  In dormitories        |      489     |      195
  or hostels            |              |
  ----------------------+--------------+-------------------
  In institutions       |      358     |      151

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#99

Post by [deleted] »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #96
octopusRex wrote: post #8

The US chooses not to end homelessness. We have the highest GDP in the world. We could end it if we wanted to. I was in Japan recently. A choice was made there as well.

How do you end homelessness, when some percent of homeless people will, if you give them a place to stay, smoke meth all day and make their apartment and nearby apartments health hazards? Many drug addicts don't want to be addicted, and would try to go through treatment if provided. But some are inveterate, and don't want to quit. What do you do with them?

[deleted]

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#100

Post by thfuran »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #94
thePhytochemist wrote: post #50

This issue is very relevant for me since I have been homeless since May. It's been a bad run of being a target of criminal activity, unemployment and just running out of money during my job search. I cope with a mix of volunteering, overpriced housing (think $1200/month for a room in a rural area before I ran out of money for that), catsitting, house-sitting, staying with family and sleeping in my ancient car. Althou…

With all due respect, why volunteer? I notice this with a lot of homeless people I chat with (there's a lot here in Boulder) - many of them volunteer their time at various charities while being homeless. Wouldn't it be better devoting 100% of your spare time to getting back on your feet, and then volunteer, or donate?

Why do most people have only one job? Wouldn't it be better to spend evenings at a second job and then have leisure when you retire?
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