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Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

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Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#491

Post by ghaff »

gottorf wrote: post #490
ghaff wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of that probably applies to the US as well. There's no shortage of relatively inexpensive housing but a lot of people just don't want to live in those places for a variety of reasons. Ask a lot of the people here: it's cold and snows, it's not welcoming to people like me, there aren't a lot of good local jobs, there's a lot of crime...

> there's a lot of crime This is maybe the biggest difference between America and other developed countries when it comes to this subject. You'll find that a fifth-percentile priced home in Spain, Korea, or Australia will be in a rural area with not a lot of economic prospects, but in the US you'll have the additional burden of finding a meth lab next door or being a homicide victim.

In the US, it's probably more about being in a bad area of Detroit (or even cities that are considered much more elite) than being rural with a meth lab next door but I don't really disagree with your basic point though I'd have to look at the actual stats. Not sure that US rural areas in general have a big crime problem relative to areas of some cities.

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#492

Post by tiahura »

yieldcrv wrote: post #361
verteu wrote: post #220

They also do a lot of compulsory psychiatric detention: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychiatric-bulletin... > Finnish mental health legislation takes a medical approach to compulsory measures, emphasising the need for treatment of psychiatric patients over civil liberties concerns... Finland has the highest rates of detention per 100 000 inhabitants, about 214 compared with 93 in the UK and 11 in Italy. >…

Its not a single thing In San Francisco studies of their populations revealed lots of segments of homeless people The one that stuck out to me the most was the most distressing: people that were homeless within last 12 months of the study, a huge percent of them were just people that left a relationship. That was a housing price problem. I knew so many people that had broken up but still living together, and its craz…

Why not leave SF and move to where you can afford to live?

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#493

Post by dyauspitr »

ghaff wrote: post #465
hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ooh, as an American involved lightly in real estate who relocated to Suomi a few years ago I always love this topic. Let me ramble. It's worth pointing out that, on a country-wide level, Finnish housing prices have been remarkably stagnant for the last 20-30 years when compared to e.g. the United States or most other European countries. That is not true of the cities, obviously, and cities are where all the work is,…

A lot of that probably applies to the US as well. There's no shortage of relatively inexpensive housing but a lot of people just don't want to live in those places for a variety of reasons. Ask a lot of the people here: it's cold and snows, it's not welcoming to people like me, there aren't a lot of good local jobs, there's a lot of crime...

There is plenty of cheap rural housing in places without a lot of crime in the US. The other problems still hold however.

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#494

Post by rayiner »

verteu wrote: post #220

They also do a lot of compulsory psychiatric detention: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychiatric-bulletin... > Finnish mental health legislation takes a medical approach to compulsory measures, emphasising the need for treatment of psychiatric patients over civil liberties concerns... Finland has the highest rates of detention per 100 000 inhabitants, about 214 compared with 93 in the UK and 11 in Italy. >…

Wow. Finland’s medical detention rate of 214 per 100,000 is on the same order of magnitude as the U.S. incarceration rate of 541 per 100,000. I wonder how many imprisonments in the US could be addressed by mental illness detention.

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#495

Post by andriamanitra »

sugarplant wrote: post #288
andriamanitra wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A stable environment is certainly going to dramatically increase the chance of overcoming an addiction. It obviously does not guarantee success but it's a crucial first step in the process. As pointed out in the article the housing first approach is actually saving money in the long run by reducing subsequent costs incurred by social services, so the "everyone else is paying for their addiction" argument does not rea…

do people really believe this claim up front? providing active junkies: 1) completely free units to destroy 2) 24/7 emergency care teams 3) completely free healthcare and mental healthcare 4) no sobriety expectations of any sort 5) no possibility to be kicked out of the program for any reason is going to be cheaper than putting them in jail or an institution? wow sounds almost too good to be true it would be interest…

I'm sure there are extreme cases but the vast majority of homeless are not much different than you and I. It does not need to be cheaper for every single homeless person individually, just cheaper on average. If you can rehabilitate even 20% that's a lot of savings and extra tax dollars to offset the costs (in addition to simply being the humane thing to do).

> 1) completely free units to destroy 2) 24/7 emergency care teams 3) completely free healthcare and mental healthcare 4) no sobriety expectations of any sort 5) no possibility to be kicked out of the program for any reason

> is going to be cheaper than putting them in jail or an institution? wow sounds almost too good to be true

Both of those are very expensive (about $100 a day for incarceration [1] and up to around $1000 a day for psychiatric treatment [2]) – and obviously a housing first program is not a drop-in replacement for them either as being homeless in itself is neither a crime nor a mental illness. I would also wager a destructive addict in their own home causes less property damage (on average) than one in temporary housing / on the streets. A 24/7 emergency care team is not a thing in assisted living facilities in Finland, and the housing provided by housing first programs is not at all limited to assisted living facilities – it is often just a completely regular rental apartment. And healthcare and mental healthcare are (nearly) free for anyone, not just "junkies". And the other two points are not even related to costs.

> housing first programs are often mixed into ordinary developments too. i bet families living near or adjacent to these units really enjoy living next to completely unstable addicts.

Actually I think it's beneficial if addicts are not lumped together in a stigmatized "housing first development". To maximize chances of rehabilitation and integration in society addicts need to be surrounded by well-functioning people, not other addicts. Otherwise you're just creating a slum where being an addict is normalized, and the problems continue to spread and get worse.

> housing first programs explicitly prioritize the least stable, most mentally ill addicts too.

Of course sufficient resources must exist to help everyone so the prioritization does not mean some people get no access to help they need. In Finland we use a broad definition of homelessness which includes people staying with relatives or friends. Providing housing to those groups helps prevent long-term homelessness. [3, p. 13-14]

> the cost of living in my city is so expensive that there are adults that work full time who have to have roommates to live at subsistence level. there are also housing first programs here that give junkies units for free to continue getting high in indefinitely. this is a ridiculous situation.

I agree the situation is ridiculous. An essential part of the housing first approach (that seems to be entirely neglected in the US) is to build enough affordable homes.

[1] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/11/19/2019-24...

[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22588167/

[3] https://ysaatio.fi/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/A_Home_of_Your...

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#496

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

Scoundreller wrote: post #384
bluefirebrand wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is obviously true, but misses the point Even if there are 10 beds and 10 people, if 9 people can afford to pay 2000 for their beds, and that last one can only afford 500, that last one is still going homeless Because the person selling the last bed is going to want around 2000 for it, just like the other 9 are paying Edit: and no, telling them they have to give up that bed for 500 is not a real option

sufficient vacant property taxes can make it a real option

Taxes! Of course; there is no problem just taking more money from other people can’t solve.

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#497

Post by watwut »

lifestyleguru wrote: post #476
Symbiote wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not too difficult to rent a room in a shared house/apartment as a single person in these cities, regardless of age.

How long into your life do you accept to share rooms and apartments? > It's not too difficult to rent a room in a shared house/apartment as a single person In Berlin or Munich absolutely not, even shared accommodation have some absurd castings. Some people really smell their advantage and squeeze every drop of humiliation they can.

Historically shared living was standard. You had multigenerational households and such too. It was not seen as humiliating, but as normal.

It has its issues and is definitely not ideal, but whether you accept these has less to do with age and more to do with culture and economics.

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#498

Post by tiahura »

dbspin wrote: post #410
bnralt wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> edit: I should mention that I've seen fairly convincing cross-sectional evidence that homelessness is more related to the housing market than mental illness: https://www.ucpress.edu/books/homelessness-is-a-housing-prob ... , https://www.nahro.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/NAHRO-Summi ... The problem is that there are very different groups of people we're talking about, so much so that throwing them all under the "…

Downright shocking that a policy like this would be adopted without the necessary social supports in place. There should be regular visits by care workers, addiction councillors, mental health professionals, access to education and jobs programmes etc. Even in the absence of mental illness and addiction (which are of course both rise in unhoused populations) living on the street leaves people with enormous unaddresse…

The problem is that one of the achievements of the counterculture has been the creation of a steadily increasing tranche of the population that has little ability or inclination for self-sufficiency.

As long as there is steadfast refusal to recognize what got us here, and instead focus on red herrings like speculators and crisis counselors, we’re going to be stuck with the problem.

Don’t feed the pigeons.

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#499

Post by ghaff »

dyauspitr wrote: post #493
ghaff wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of that probably applies to the US as well. There's no shortage of relatively inexpensive housing but a lot of people just don't want to live in those places for a variety of reasons. Ask a lot of the people here: it's cold and snows, it's not welcoming to people like me, there aren't a lot of good local jobs, there's a lot of crime...

There is plenty of cheap rural housing in places without a lot of crime in the US. The other problems still hold however.

Yeah. In that case, I was thinking more about cheaper housing in especially 2nd/3rd tier cities. Rural areas are, in general, fairly safe.

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#500

Post by tiahura »

cyberax wrote: post #392
tacitusarc wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I defy the data [1]. There is too much complexity in that single example and the law of supply/demand has been proven too frequently for it to not make sense that increasing demand to meet supply would reduce cost. 1. For clarity, this phrasing is from here https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vrHRcEDMjZcx5Yfru/i-defy-the...

> I defy the data. Sorry. The reality doesn't care about your defiance. Upzoning does not lead to lower housing prices. Even the most extreme urbanists admit that: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/4/26/upzoning-might... > and the law of supply/demand has been proven too frequently Ah, here it is. Have you considered that there, you know, might be "too much complexity" for "Economy 101" to fully explain the si…

The _only_ way to decrease the housing prices is to BUILD MORE SUBURBS. Or even new cities entirely.

Preach brother. Might I also add the possibility of encouraging migration from Metropolises to regional 100k - 200kish cities?

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