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Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

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Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#511

Post by watwut »

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…

People without good housing options are an issue even if they are not drug addicted yet and they don't have mental illness.

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#512

Post by justin66 »

ttkari wrote: post #274
justin66 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Worth pointing out that Finland is one of the most ethnically homogeneous societies in Europe - only ~10% of the population is of foreign origin and background Meh. They've got two different official languages. It's not as ethnically uniform as a lot of other European countries.

FWIW, the share of Swedish (the other official language) speakers in Finland is about 5%.

And the language is nevertheless recognized as one of the country's two official languages.

I just don't think Finland is a great example of what the post was talking about (a mythic country where everything works because it is an "ethnically homogenous high trust society" - although on reflection I'm not even sure what that all means). It's a way of lazily discounting what their government might or might not be achieving regarding homelessness, and it's not even true.

I'm not any sort of expert on Finland, but they have had some real political and social divides over the years and (I think?) nevertheless manage to care about the effectiveness of their welfare state. They'd appear to be a counterexample to the notion that everybody in a country needs to be the same in order for this stuff to work.

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#513

Post by gottorf »

ghaff wrote: post #491
gottorf wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yeah, you're probably right. To restate my point, it's that buying a cheap house in the US comes with risks to one's basic safety that you don't find in other developed countries.

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#514

Post by sugarplant »

andriamanitra wrote: post #495
sugarplant wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ca…

>I'm sure there are extreme cases but the vast majority of homeless are not much different than you and I.

i have seen estimates saying 50% are addicted to substances. in any case housing first prioritizes the most unstable and mentally ill to give immediate housing. this is a very typical feature of the program. if you are finnish, you should check out some videos of what our homeless are like. it's obviously not the same for multiple reasons.

>Actually I think it's beneficial if addicts are not lumped together in a stigmatized "housing first development".

again, to everyone else's detriment.

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

this is a funny statement considering wages in finland vs real estate prices. ive been told by a top 5% income finn that buying a house is not really possible for most people there currently. you can only inherit. the wages are lower, the taxes much higher, and real estate more expensive. of course you probably mean the technical "affordable housing" definition which just means housing for anyone making under median area income. the money to fund these things comes from somewhere, and it seems to typically always be the middle class.

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#515

Post by throw5959 »

epistasis wrote: post #473
throw5959 wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody cares about growth. The world will end the minute we finally stop growing. The entire economic system and society will unravel

Do recessions unravel the economic system? Is the UK ready to collapse as a system after an extended period of stagnation? I guess it depends on your precise definition of "growth" but I am having trouble finding one that can fit with your assertions.

Recessions are slowdowns of growth.

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#516

Post by throw5959 »

dns_snek wrote: post #441
throw5959 wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody cares about growth. The world will end the minute we finally stop growing. The entire economic system and society will unravel

I don't care about growth, nor do most people I know. We don't need to endlessly consume to be happy. The world won't end when this economic system unravels either, it's not the first and it won't be the last one to fail.

Lol, you have no idea what you're talking about. I lived through the collapse of the Soviet Union. You don't want to live like that.

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#517

Post by epistasis »

bdowling wrote: post #376
epistasis wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason it's expensive is or because the US is bigger. It's because the people in cities want to keep people out so they make it very expensive. Which in turn fuels homelessness. The desire to exclude, the refusal to permit enough housing, and the rejection of density are the fundamental cause. The scale of the US has nothing to do with it. It's merely a cultural choice by a prior generation that younger generatio…

The answer is to just build a lot more housing. Increasing the housing stock by 10% everywhere would be a good start. If there is so much housing available that buyers don’t get into bidding wars and landlords have to struggle to find tenants, then prices will come down. Why doesn’t this happen? Because developers will have to do more work for less money.

More housing is absolutely the answer. But your cause is wrong.

The impediment to housing in California is capture of land use policy by homeowners and landlords. We should expand the category of home builders beyond developers, but developers make zero money when they are not building. So developers are not holding back housing in California. The few remaining developers in California tend to be more land bankers than developers. But if we made the process for decelopnrt straightforward, then small builders and contractors could build all sorts of projects. At the moment the process is so complex and difficult that getting approval to build on a site is a hugely valuable financial product that increases the value of a parcel of land significantly (though necessarily less than the cost of getting that approval).

The reason we do not have enough housing all comes down to that NIMBY neighbor who doesn't want to allow apartments anywhere nearby and who has also been given lots of wrenches to throw into the process of approval. We don't have that sort of approval process for single family homes, it's a night and day difference. Anybody is allowed to build a massive mansion without any community input, but for anything more affordable, neighbors can veto it, and do.

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#518

Post by jfil »

rhubarbtree wrote: post #429
cudgy wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not implying that immigration is the only reason for higher housing prices. My opinion is that 0% interest rates and loose credit are the primary reason. However, simple supply/demand would suggest that immigration AND 0% interest rates both affect demand quickly while supply requires securing land, building homes and getting approval to build homes takes significant time. Migrations are happening at a faster rat…

On HN and on tech twitter I often see this statement: “the reason rents are high is because we don’t build enough houses.” But I don’t think that’s really true, I think that’s very simplistic. The missing observation is that housing has become an asset class in a way it wasn’t in the past. Large numbers of people purchase houses to rent seek as landlords, and the only limit to the demand for rent seeking is the abili…

This is an interesting perspective on increased supply that I haven't considered before. It is remarkable how similar the Canadian housing situation is to the UK's.

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#519

Post by ipaddr »

barbazoo wrote: post #208
ipaddr wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> 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. A bit of a strawman, social service doesn't have to mean homeless shelter, so no, no one is forcing anyone to do anything. Problem is in many places at least where I live, there just isn't enough money to serve all the people that need…

Homeless people go to homeless shelters from that point they could go into secondary housing or other programs.

In my city they wanted to end homelessness 25 years ago. They had enough money to do so and went ahead. They found a 1/3 refused to come in even on the coldest days for various reasons. The fight became do you let them stay and sleep on the street or do you force them into shelters/jails.

What is more humane? The let's leave them on the street but send people to feed them approach won over the forcible removals.

So homelessness remained.

When people say they want to end homelessness I don't think they realize they need to jail some of them.

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#520

Post by sugarplant »

wrl wrote: post #503
sugarplant wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe if you act just a little more condescending i will have a clue what you are trying to say

By what mechanism would reducing needle and syringe programs lead to fewer needles being left in public places? It's not like access to needles causes people to take up an injection drug habit.

there are different ways of accomplishing a needle program. around here they hand out packs of 100 without any stipulation. to everyone's surprise, our city is now littered in stray needles and requires constant cleanup. they're everywhere. the various programs do attract people from other states. this much is evident by our shelter logs which survey where they are from.

it's important to note that it's probably not a very large set of them that dump their needles publicly. this is outright sociopathic and evil, which i don't think most of them are. this distinction is important because the sociopathic homeless do make it a much more taboo issue to deal with.

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