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Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

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Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#141

Post by Aunche »

wesselbindt wrote: post #108
nostromo wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how every westerner visits Japan and comes home thinking we can "solve crime" or "solve homelessness" or "have clean subway stations." Japan's culture is why those things are the way they are. It's not due to funding. It's because people raise their children differently than we do in the west. The family's obligations are also greater. And, yes, there are homeless people in Japan. But they typically are in…

[flagged]

Geopolitical commentary aside, the city of San Francisco has spent billions of dollars on homelessness and it has only gotten worse. I'm not opposed to paying higher taxes to house people less fortunate than me, but I expect the government to get their money's worth. If I wouldn't want to spend a million on a shoebox, then the city shouldn't either.

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#142

Post by mmooss »

wklm wrote: post #118
cousin_it wrote: post #106

I think governments should offer free housing to everyone who asks, in their city of choice. "But why should taxpayers pay for that? It's expensive!" Yes, it would be very expensive. But you know what's even more expensive? The sum of everybody's lowered wages, bad bosses, fear for the future, fear of having kids and so on, due to the threat of homelessness. Yes, building housing is expensive, but the removal of fear…

Quite an interesting perspective, sadly it’ll likely never get implemented in any capitalistic economy

That rumor is the biggest obstacle. If you believed it was possible, and instead told others it was possible, it might actually be.

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#143

Post by singleshot_ »

andrewla wrote: post #134
annzabelle wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that Northern Europe has a much more robust system of using Long Acting Injectable Antipsychotics (under court order if nessecary) and various group home options or Assertive Community Treatment teams that have nurses visit patients daily. They are also quicker to use lithium and clozapine when indicated. They also do much longer hospital stays when needed than our revolving door policies here. Al…

Do we have any numbers on the number of people that are in this system? I'm frankly curious if the numbers in the original article can effectively be completely explained by this system rather than the policies listed in the article. In the US the system broke down in the 50s and 60s and collapsed completely in the 70s and 80s due to bad treatment options and often very inhumane conditions and cases of misdiagnoses.…

> due to bad treatment options and often very inhumane conditions and cases of misdiagnoses.

I thought that it broke down due to a Supreme Court decision (O’Connor v. Donaldson, 422 U.S. 563 (1975)) but perhaps they were interrelated.

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#144

Post by IncreasePosts »

Groxx wrote: post #127
IncreasePosts wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notice how I never said they were.

You do however seem to be implying "this won't work because some won't go along with it, therefore we should not do it ". In which case you're essentially saying "meth users decide everyone's housing status".

No, that is not what I'm saying. Notice, I never said we shouldn't do anything.

I'm saying reaching the state of "no homelessness" is dependent upon finding something to do with the worst of the homeless.

For a tech analogy, imagine you've architected a system that has 99.5% uptime. You might be able to imagine a way to get to 99.9% up time.

With enough resources, you might even be able to get to 99.99% uptime. With laser focus and a giant dedicated team and an immense budget, maybe you can get it to 99.995%.

But what would you do if some exec came in and said we need 100% uptime, and we are a failure as a company unless we reach that?

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#145

Post by Xortl »

wesselbindt wrote: post #101
andrewla wrote: post #92

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 h…

Have you ever considered that it may be the other way around? That the horrors of living on the street (and "horrors" is an appropriate term here, you are fighting for survival every day; it is beyond the realm of comprehension of the housed) might be causing the mental illness and drug use, rather than the other way around? If I want to get a homeless person off of drugs, it sure as crisps is not going to happen unt…

I'm happy to read evidence I'm wrong (I want to be wrong - it would make me much more optimistic about a fix), but my own life and everything I've read suggests the opposite - once someone develops a serious drug or alcohol addiction it leads to them destroying everything good in their lives and inevitably they either sober up or end up homeless. Nearly all of the people who stay homeless in the long term have some severe mental illness (including addiction). Short of an involuntary commitment which is its own kind of hell, helping these people is incredibly difficult.

I have multiple family members who fit this pattern and it's absolutely godawful. The addiction literally rules them. They will perpetually ask for money for "needs" then spend it on drugs. If another family member houses them, they will sneakily maintain their addiction and steal from family to support it when necessary. If you offer them housing on condition of getting sober, they will choose addiction and homelessness. If you offer them housing without condition, they will use it to stay an addict in perpetuity, who everyone else is paying for. I don't think this last is a remotely viable solution with the number of addicts out there, which is only growing.

I'm not saying this to condemn addicts/mentally ill people. I just want to give an idea of just how hard this problem is to fix.

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#146

Post by mmooss »

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…

Stay warm! And thank you for stepping forward to share your story and perspective. HN needs much more of it.

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#147

Post by ipaddr »

barbazoo wrote: post #30
ipaddr wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US could end homelessness but would need to stop immigration and change the constitution which could force people in shelter. Not sure it's the outcome we all want.

That's your assumption. Instead, mine is that it would require some kind of wealth transfer to pay for the social services.

Paying for the social services is possible. The difficult issue is some people don't want to go to a homeless shelter because they want to maintain a level of freedom while others fear they will be robbed/raped at the shelter.

Do you force them inside?

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#148

Post by PaulHoule »

andrewla wrote: post #134
annzabelle wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that Northern Europe has a much more robust system of using Long Acting Injectable Antipsychotics (under court order if nessecary) and various group home options or Assertive Community Treatment teams that have nurses visit patients daily. They are also quicker to use lithium and clozapine when indicated. They also do much longer hospital stays when needed than our revolving door policies here. Al…

Do we have any numbers on the number of people that are in this system? I'm frankly curious if the numbers in the original article can effectively be completely explained by this system rather than the policies listed in the article. In the US the system broke down in the 50s and 60s and collapsed completely in the 70s and 80s due to bad treatment options and often very inhumane conditions and cases of misdiagnoses.…

That's a wrong chronology. Before the 1950s we did not have effective treatments for schizophrenia other than incarceration.

In old books you read about

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catatonia

being intractable, now it usually clears up in 15-30 minutes with benzodiazepine medication. In the 1950s we got the Phenothiazines which were the first hope for many patients, there has been a huge amount of progress since then and managing most of these people outside the hospital is possible. People also came to see involuntary commitment as immoral as described by Thomas Szasz, depicted by the movie "One Flew out of the Cuckoo's Nest" and shown by this experiment

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment

The trouble isn't that we tore down the old system but that we didn't completely build a new system to replace it. There are deep issues involving people's agency. Right now we are in a society that thinks it is wrong to make people to take drugs they don't want to take, a different society (maybe even ours in N years) will think is it wrong to not make people take drugs for serious mental illness.

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#149

Post by mmooss »

thfuran wrote: post #104
peab wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it's cultural, it can be fixed. Culture can change and can be changed by choice

Culture changes, but it's very hard to deliberately effect specific changes.

Not really. People deliberately persuade the public of things all the time. Some persuade them of absolutely false, awful things with regularity.

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#150

Post by mmooss »

Aunche wrote: post #141
wesselbindt wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Geopolitical commentary aside, the city of San Francisco has spent billions of dollars on homelessness and it has only gotten worse. I'm not opposed to paying higher taxes to house people less fortunate than me, but I expect the government to get their money's worth. If I wouldn't want to spend a million on a shoebox, then the city shouldn't either.

What is the point? Not everything has worked, so do nothing? If we read the OP, we can find out about some things that have worked.
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