Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (2020) | Hacker News Reader

Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (2020)

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354 pointsmpweiher346 comments

Just as a point of comparison, one of the programs San Francisco introduced during the pandemic was "safe sleeping sites", which are parking lots where homeless can have their tent without it being periodically swept by police. To that, they add chemical toilets, a water supply and (I'm not sure why) 24/7 security staff. For this, the city pays around $60k per tent site per year. I'm not sure if this is in part due to some unsavory relationship between the org administering the program and some city official. Recently the program was extended. It would be cheaper to rent apartments at current market rates, even in San Francisco.

Our revealed preference seems to be that we'd rather have homeless people live in tents than have poor people get free or nearly free housing.

> and (I'm not sure why) 24/7 security staff

You can lock your stuff in a house or car and walk away. You can't lock your stuff in a tent and walk away. This is the real reason for homeless people "keeping their life in a shopping trolley": they need to move their possessions around with them because there's nowhere secure to keep them.

Security staff, preventing randoms from stealing these people's possessions out of their tents (or especially, discouraging them from stealing from each-other) makes a tent into something much closer to a home.

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An alternate approach I've seen applied to my local area (downtown east-side Vancouver) is to offer something half-way between "safety deposit boxes" and "storage units" as a free/cheap service — where each homeless person gets their own assigned 53-litre storage tote, with mediated check-out to ensure nobody has access to your tote but you.

This doesn't solve exactly the same set of problems — you can't usefully store your food and cooking implements in a place that's only open 9-5 — but it at least allows you to trust that your sentimental objects, small collectibles, etc. are being kept safe.

I knew someone homeless who told me his tent had been attacked twice - slashed, and set on fire one of those times - while he was sleeping in it.

That sounds like enough of a reason for 24/7 security to me.

And, sadly, to prevent random people from attacking the homeless people.

And to prevent homeless people from attacking each other.

Parent comment was down voted but AFAIK it's correct, many homeless people avoid shelters because they consider them unsafe due to other homeless people, some of which are dangerous to others.

And that's why programs that segregate homeless people (put them on shelters, or put them on government-designated parking lots) won't ever ever succeed. You need to properly integrate the homeless into society, which in our society generally means having an apartment for each family unit.

Wouldn't lockers be a relatively affordable option?

If your possessions fit in a locker. But I think security here is to prevent or react to violence, not necessarily theft. I’ve heard stories of homeless people avoiding shelters because you can get raped, for example.

> But I think security here is to prevent or react to violence, not necessarily theft.

Perhaps I'm quibbling, but I suspect that violence and theft aren't necessarily separate categories of incident.

I was just thinking that it’d be really hard to avoid theft in a camp settlement.

The reasons I've heard for avoiding homeless shelters were theft, robbery and lice.

The city is still giving out lots of housing. Except when the city tries to build housing, it takes many years and $800k per unit.

The city has put up so many regulatory hurdles that make it almost impossible to build anything. Consider this project that would've added 19 housing units https://twitter.com/samdman95/status/1415839145386196993. It was blocked because it would've increased shadow cover on Delores Park by .001% (as if SF has a shadow problem instead of a housing problem).

There really is no point in the city trying to build housing for the homeless without addressing the regulatory issues first. If the city were to try to build housing for all its (by the official count) 8000 homeless people, it would cost >$6 billion.

Relative to pretty much all other markets, it's practically impossible to solve homelessness in San Francisco. There are at least two major considerations. The first is the one you pointed out that there are far too many barriers. The second is that San Francisco is a fundamentally hard city to succeed in. Even competent folks with good educations and no real personal problems struggle to do well in San Francisco. If it is hard for such people, it's only going to be far more difficult for people without the same education and with many personal problems.

With these two major constraints in mind, it boggles my mind that we continue to try and solve the problem in San Francisco, instead of directing all the resources to other markets without these constraints.

Providing resources elsewhere and removing support in San Francisco will serve to incentivize the homeless to relocate to places where programs like housing first can be tried and where they have a chance of actually getting on their own two feet because they aren't in a hyper-competitive local market.

Last time someone asked me to donate money to the homeless problem in San Francisco, I told them no, but then proceeded to donate money to a homeless program in another city (at the time I chose a program in Sacremento) because it's beyond stupid to keep putting money into trying to solve the problem in San Francisco if you actually want to see results from the money you spend on the problem.

People working on this problem in San Francisco either have more heart than brains or they are part of the San Francisco homelessness industrial complex and have a vested interest in keeping these programs in San Francisco because they want to live in San Francisco and are employed in this industry.

Social worker salaries in San Francisco are $60k to $100k a year. If you can pay for two to three social workers in other markets instead for the same price, why pay for such people to work in San Francisco.

San Francisco can change! But only if people demand more housing to be built and stop the nonsense linked by previous comment. Its up to the people of SF to fix this.

And solving the regulatory hurdles might also might start to reduce the homelessness problem before the city even starts giving away free units to anyone in need.

You can’t give apartments away at market rates to fix homelessness because about half of the homeless people are too mentally troubled/addicted to be able to handle an apartment. So you still have to pay for security and now you also have to pay for people to come and clean the apartments.

Also, SF has indoor shelters and such. Including putting people in hotels. The tents, AIUI, are for people who wouldn’t be allowed in the shelters for whatever reason (like people with dogs or people who are using drugs very frequently, not allowed around children, etc.)

Incredible that you’re down voted for simply speaking the truth. There are literally people who fling their HIV positive blood or feces at anyone who approaches them and carry machetes and axes. They need conservatorship not an apartment

I guess what I said just sounds callous to people who are aware of homelessness but don’t have direct experience trying to help them. It’s a complex problem and there’s a reason beyond graft that it hasn’t been fixed.

As with many things I’m sure 80% of the resources are going to the 20% of people who are the most difficult to handle. Many homeless people are normal people who are just very down on their luck. But those homeless people are often “invisible” to the general public since they usually don’t sleep rough, yell at people on the street, etc.

Finland can probably solve it because they fund “inpatient mental health services” which is what can actually fix homelessness for the most difficult people suffering it. That is super expensive though.

On the other hand, you cannot force people into the wards unless they pose grave danger to themselves or the society.

And the current sentiment is that yelling slurs or urinating in a subway is not grave enough to justify involuntary confinement.

Not quite true in California - being "gravely disabled" also justifies involuntary detainment and treatment: "A condition in which a person, as a result of a mental health disorder, is unable to provide for his or her basic personal needs for food, clothing, or shelter."

In reality though, the lack of funding for such people means that only the most severe are treated under this category. What's required is the funding and political will to enforce it, the necessary legal structure is already in place.

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...

The difference might be that mental issues are identified and cared for much earlier, before people end up on the streets and things worsen more and more. Locking people up into wards is not the only option.

Not at all an expert in this, but it sounds like there are much more mentally ill people in the streets in the US compared to other places.

The article shows that Finland is spending less money solving the problem. The complete opposite of what you are arguing. Does that in any way make you consider, even for a second, that your pre-conceived ideology/religion might get in the way of you understanding what the reality is?

Sounds like those people belong in an asylum then, not an apartment.

I know some asylums are mismanaged and let’s just pretend they’re not here and that states properly fund and regulate them.

It's a gray area. There are people who, with care and looking-after, can be useful-if-weird members of society, but who without that support would spiral out of control. "Crazy"/"not-crazy" isn't a binary.

"""about half of the homeless people are too mentally troubled/addicted to be able to handle an apartment."""

citation needed

You're simply expressing your prejudice about a huge group of people and you have immediate experience about a very few of them that you noticed (probably because they were loud).

Are some people too troubled for easy housing? Absolutely, but you've made this huge step into "about half" and you are expressing a prejudice which keeps the problem from being solved because it becomes seemingly impossible with this hurdle you've invented.

An over estimate, but not too far off the mark:

"In 2019, 36% percent of the chronically homeless suffered from a chronic substance abuse problem, a severe mental illness, or both" [1] For the published data used to come to this conclusion see [2].

This doesn't include less sever mental illness which almost certainly contributes.

[1] https://sunrisehouse.com/addiction-demographics/homeless-pop...

[2] https://files.hudexchange.info/reports/published/CoC_PopSub_...

That statistic doesn't come near to supporting OP's claim. There are plenty of people with substance abuse problems or mental illness who could "handle" living in a free apartment if it were provided to them. The fact that they can't afford market-rate housing doesn't necessarily mean they'd destroy any home they lived in.

The US isn't the only country with homeless people. In much of Europe where people actually can literally go and obtain free social housing there are still sizeable homeless populations for exactly the reason OP pointed out, they cannot manage their day-to-day affairs because they are drug addicted or mentally ill.

In Germany we have about 50k people living on the streets. Technically none of those people need to be. They could all get the necessary financial aid.

The quote you provided states that:

"In 2019, 36% percent of the chronically homeless suffered from a chronic substance abuse problem, a severe mental illness, or both"

The key word here is "chronic." According to the National Alliance to End Homelessnes[0][1] (based on data, including the link you cited, from HUD[2]), less than 20% of homeless people are chronically homeless. As such, less than 10% of the total homeless population "suffer chronic substance abuse problem, a severe mental illness, or both"

So you're projecting the traits of a (relatively) small group onto the larger whole. An assertion which seems problematic at best.

[0] https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homeless...

[1] https://public.tableau.com/static/images/20/2020SOH_PIT_bars...

[2] https://www.hudexchange.info/programs/coc/coc-homeless-popul...

> > about half of the homeless people are too mentally troubled/addicted to be able to handle an apartment.

> citation needed

To fully qualify the statement made by the person you're replying to:

I would argue that it is indeed clear that around half of the individuals facing chronic homelessness urgently require mental health and addiction support.

for those people, they may likely face crisis and be consequently unable to upkeep any dwelling that is freely provided to them unless they have extensive support and possibly even in-patient care.

* About 30% of people who are chronically homeless have mental health conditions.

* About 50% have co-occurring substance use problems.

https://www.homelesshub.ca/resource/individuals-experiencing...

You're not wrong except when you say "about half". Unless you have hard statistics it's better to refrain from throwing numbers up in the air.

So how do you explain the real world facts of the Finish success? I know it goes against your preconceived ideology/religion but perhaps reevaluate what you think is true given counterfactual real world events?

"(I'm not sure why) 24/7 security staff."

Despite your doubts - homeless folks are not idiots. I live near a similar site. It has a no visitor policy, 24/7 security etc. I would call it a huge success relative to the surrounding homeless impacts.

The issue for the homeless and many govt run programs is that it's often easier for govt to do nothing. Ie, your stuff is stolen, visitors etc cause problems etc. A huge amount of public housing really suffered from this - despite being govt run it was worse, not better.

If you can carve a (small) space, no zoning issues, tent on pallet, secuirty for your stuff and yourself, no visitors causing trouble - you can give people some basic stability in sleeping etc.

As to the $60K - you need to be comparing to costs in SF generally for services for a homeless person - I'd estimate $110 - $150K (higher end is if you include the excess ambulance runs etc). So this is relatively competitive.

Yeah getting your stuff stolen is a huge deal for homeless people because they don’t have much to begin with. So they value a lot the possessions they do have. Ever see a homeless camp or person with tons of black trash bags? That is everything that person owns. And the police probably can’t/won’t get that stuff back if it’s stolen.

You may be thinking “who would steal stuff from homeless people?” Other homeless people, so in a camp where they’re concentrated it’s a real concern.

There’s also the concerns that drug dealers will hang out at the camp/shelter since many of the homeless are addicted, and the ones that aren’t are vulnerable. Same with petty crime rings like shoplifters/fences.

Something is seriously wrong if it costs $150k per year to be homeless in SF.

6 years ago, I lived there quite comfortably making only $70k BEFORE taxes, and was able to save a decent bit per year on top of that.

Even now, I /only/ spend $90k per year - and my lifestyle is quite extravagant.

It's just out of control if it costs almost twice as much money to have almost nothing.

SF does $600 million to $800 million per year just through DHSH.

My guess is around 300 - 400 million through other depts (SF DPH etc). Behavioral health services alone run $500M and DPH is at $2.4 billion in their budget.

I'm excluding Fire / Police / MOCD / other services (there are a ton).

Rough numbers maybe $1B/year? for 8-12,000 folks?

This is both very large, but SF probably only spends around 8-10% of budget on this - the SF budget is very large.

That's crazy! I know american cities handle services that are handled at a provincial level here in Canada but the budget for the city of Montreal is only around 6B$ in Canadian dollars. And that's with all the costs that come from snow removal and the never ending repairs our roads need due to winter damage.

Montreal is much larger though I think? Sf is 800K or so in population

You also presumably were able to manage your own affairs, had a reputation and connections that meant you could get safe living quarters without being assaulted or having your stuff stolen, weren’t leaving dangerous biohazards around someone else needed to be paid to deal with - all of that adds up.

> It would be cheaper to rent apartments at current market rates, even in San Francisc

Indeed it would, but that is not a realistic option. These are high needs groups, many with severe mental disorders and drug addictions.

It is an embarrassment that we don't have better infrastructure to serve these groups, but it's tough renting out market rate apartments to serve them. Landlords of course have to agree.

SF is able to do this with custom-built housing, or Project Roomkey, but it's not like we can find 4,500 private apartments where landlords will happily put up a schizophrenic guy with a meth addiction.

It's also worth pointing out that $60k for these sites is not just payment for shelter. It includes three meals a day, social services, security, sanitation.

May be for some of the houseless but many don't have mental disorders or drug addictions, many people are just down on their luck. Also, pretty sure Finland has people with those issues as well.

"but many don't have mental disorders or drug addictions, many people are just down on their luck"

Be out of luck for a while and chances are high, that you develope mental disorders as well as drug addictions.

Do you live in SF? It’s quite apparent that a huge percentage of the homeless, if not the majority, have a mental disorder, drug addiction, or both.

That’s just for the visible chronic homeless. There are plenty of homeless people living under the radar in their cars and such that really are just down in their luck, and don’t get noticed them because they aren’t chronic cases.

Sure. But they do get captured here: https://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/ExecutiveSu...

69% are reporting being disabled in some way that’s preventing them from being housed (read: addiction, mental illness, health issues resulting from these, etc). 42% are self reporting current addiction, 39% have self reported current psychiatric/emotional disorder of some kind, and 37% with PTSD (apparently getting separately reported from the prior stat). These numbers are likely higher in reality.

Of course there are some that lost their job, don’t make enough, etc. That’s the population that you could expect to make a come back with support. But a very significant portion are beyond tractable. Drive thru the tenderloin and tell me what you see is rehabilitatable.

Seems to me the easier story would be preventing homelessness in the first place, which would involve making our society kinder for all, not just the homeless. It got significantly worse after Regan defunded the mental health wards. Many progressives support this cause of holding people against their will — I’m not sure being homeless and mentally ill is more humane. At some point it’s easier to centralize long term care than to ad hoc beds and social services.

That isn’t a given. It could be that the standard strong social safety net is enough to keep people without substance abuse or mental illness problems out of homelessness. It would be interesting to do an honest accounting, at any rate.

Are you saying talking about the social safety net in Finland or the US? I don't understand the argument you're making, if anything the weakness of the social safety net in the US bolsters my argument that a larger fraction of homeless people in the US are just down on their luck relative to the fraction of homeless people in Finland.

EDIT: In order to avoid deepening the thread, may you restate your point so that I can understand what you mean?

Finland.

Also I’m not sure how to evaluate “a large fraction of the homeless are just down in their luck.” Those are the easy cases that are more likely to get effective help already, even in more dysfunctional American cities. And if they aren’t, we have a much better chance of doing a better job there, since their problems are much easier to solve than those of the more chronic homeless.

In fact, our first priority should be to prevent “down in their luck” homeless cases from becoming chronic “substance abuse/mental illness” homeless cases.

> where landlords will happily put up a schizophrenic guy with a meth addiction.

Isn't this a discrimination under the Fair Housing Act? My understanding is that both mental illness and drug addiction can constitute a disability.

Neither the mentally ill nor drug addicts are protected classes. The best protection they will get is under the ADA, and I’ve never seen it be used to argue for access to housing for non-physical handicaps.

That is not correct. I'm sure mental illness would qualify for ADA protection with the correct doctor's note and filings. Drug addiction is definitely protected under the ADA.

(Pdf) https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/drug-addiction-aand-...

Not for housing. Protection yes, but landlords are not required to not evict a paranoid schizophrenic that has threatened violence on other residents (and the eviction sticks when they try to rent later). The ADA also doesn’t prevent landlords from ignoring drug convictions from someone a substance abuser. They can’t ask you for your status, but they won’t ignore any other signals that are a consequence of that status.

Maybe… but most localities will allow you to do a background check.

As a former landlord, I can almost guarantee someone with the problems you mention will and felonies, poor rental references, and/or evictions. You can easily use those to legally disqualify a prospective tenant.

My revealed preference is that, due to the economic surplus produced by economic liberty, we have the luxury of being able to allocate resources to individuals in need. A luxury, mind you, in no way guaranteed by the conditions of nature.

Now, given that we have the resources in order to allocate some resources to individuals in need, I think it's a perfectly serviceable objective to provide housing for those unable to house themselves. I don't, however, think it's a perfectly serviceable objective to provide housing for those unable to house themselves by saying that they have a right to remain on an extremely space-constrained peninsula which has led to one of the most competitive and expensive real estate markets on the entire planet.

So to reiterate my revealed preference: no I don't think the homeless should be housed in tents in SF, and neither do I think that they have a right to be housed anywhere in SF. I think that we have the luxury of surplus resources to provide housing for those in need, but I think that this housing should be built in an area that is not space constrained, and is as economically viable as possible.

So send all the homeless people to Bakersfield then? I wonder how the current residents of Bakersfield would feel about that.

There's a lot of space in this country.

The majority sentiment appears to be that homeless people deserve to suffer to some degree, and that without pain they’ll never be properly motivated to get a job and rejoin society.

The fact that this never works doesn’t really seem to dissuade anyone. No city has managed to solve the homelessness problem with anti-sleeping architecture and police crackdowns, but they’ll keep trying.

The majority sentiment in our large US cities, especially on the west coast, seems to be that tens of millions of people ought to have significantly reduced quality of life rather than thousands of people have their freedom curtailed. Even if that freedom is being used in ways that are not only degrading quality of life for the tens of millions but not even creating especially great quality of life for the thousands.

We’ve prioritized autonomy so much that we’ve ended up in a miserable equilibrium for all involved.

The only things progressives have to offer is maybe if we spend just a few more tens of millions; maybe if we throw just a few hundred more well intentioned social workers, drug counselors, and psychologists--then those few thousands will choose a different path. Because obviously the universe is a just one and there’s never any tough tradeoffs to be made. If only everyone cared as much as we progressives (aka good people) wouldn’t life be so glorious?

It's not simply a matter of public sentiment. Federal courts have consistently ruled that cities can't criminalize homelessness, or involuntarily commit people to mental institutions if they don't present an immediate risk. Changing this might require a Constitutional amendment.

What is the “non-progressive” solution to homelessness? As far as I can tell, it’s “I don’t care where you stay, but it can’t be here,” which is obviously not an actual solution in a global sense.

Enforcing basic property rights is a good start. “I’m sorry sir or madam, but this is some of the most expensive real estate in the entire world, and you may not just pitch a tent here on the sidewalk. If you refuse to remove yourself then we will remove you.”As you say, this is not a total solution to the larger problem, but it’s a start.

Any difficult problem needs to be broken down into pieces and analyzed piece by piece, and I posit that this is the clear and obvious part of any serious solution. Logically, I can only see two other possibilities.

1) We solve homelessness and criminality once and for all, such that nobody would even attempt to pitch a tent on property that isn’t theirs without permission, or else would willingly remove themselves once their error were pointed out to them. I hold that this is impossible, and though we should always strive for perfection, we must recognize and account for our limitations.

2) We keep the status quo, where vagrants are not forcibly removed and instead are allowed to live dispersed throughout the city.

If I’m missing another possibility here, then somebody please point it out to me. Note that I’m purposefully leaving out any discussion of where those that are forced to leave should go, which admittedly must be a part of any solution but is not the part that I’m interested in for now. Additionally I accept that there is plenty to debate regarding precisely how enforced removal should be carried out; for the sake of discussion, let’s assume that everyone should be given fair warning and a chance to leave at their own accord, and violent force should be kept strictly to what’s minimally necessary to enforce the rules.

Am I wrong to think that enforced removal is necessary to any serious solution? And if so, can somebody explain to me why I’ve never heard of a “progressive” solution that grants this point and incorporates it into its plan?

Police will generally enforce private property rights by forcibly removing trespassers (although it sometimes takes a while). The problem is that homeless people usually occupy public property. Police can prevent them from doing certain things like blocking sidewalks but otherwise they have the same legal right to be on public property as anyone else.

> “I’m sorry sir or madam, but this is some of the most expensive real estate in the entire world, and you may not just pitch a tent here on the sidewalk. If you refuse to remove yourself then we will remove you.”

I mean, this is what they do in a lot of cities (albeit not San Francisco), except it’s usually far less polite than this. It’s not uncommon to see LAPD breaking up homeless camps and destroying their possessions (funny how selective property rights are), and it’s not exactly fixed the problem in LA.

At best it tends to push them towards cities that’ll not abuse them arbitrarily, at least until the voters in that area vote in a police chief that’ll be “tough on crime” and they’re turned out, repeating the cycle.

> Am I wrong to think that enforced removal is necessary to any serious solution?

Yes, because it’s what we’ve been trying for about half a century and it has failed miserably. At best it results in us playing hot potato with them between different cities. At worst it involves illegal application of state violence against the poor and powerless.

It’s genuinely hard for me to understand how “enforced removal” could possibly be seen as a solution for homelessness. Maybe if your goal is to stop seeing the problem, perhaps. But it’s not exactly a solution; are the homeless going to stop being homeless after you’ve “removed” them? Or are they just going to be dumped somewhere else after getting roughed up by the cops a bit?

> If I’m missing another possibility here, then somebody please point it out to me. Note that I’m purposefully leaving out any discussion of where those that are forced to leave should go, which admittedly must be a part of any solution but is not the part that I’m interested in for now.

There’s a good reason why I accuse a lot of people of not actually wanting to solve the problem, but rather make it happen out of sight. It’s rare to have someone say it so nakedly though.

Maybe you should focus less on where they should go, and more on rehabilitating as many of them as possible back into society? If they had homes in which to secure their possessions, maybe fewer of them would feel the need to camp out on the property you seem so concerned about? Or better yet we can take a look at what policy changes have caused the homeless population to grow and change those, so that fewer of our fellow human beings end up on the street? Just a thought.

Institutionalization. I’m all in favor of nice institutions and every effort at rehabilitation but if you are in such a condition that you can’t go about your life without ruining those of everyone around you, then society is entitled to protect itself by removing you.

No way that power will be abused, nosiree…

I am also extremely dubious that there are anywhere near as many untreatable cases as people seem to think.

I don’t think the sentiment is that they “deserve to suffer” so much as “why should I be subsidizing the comfort of a group that is so aggressively antisocial?”.

I think it is fair to categorize the majority of interactions the public has with the homeless as negative. With most falling somewhere between simple harassment (aggressive panhandling) and serious crime (mugging, assault, property damage, etc).

Of course, this is a huge generalization and #notallhomeless blah blah blah… But I think even those that advocate for homeless would have a tough time arguing that they increase the quality of life in the neighborhoods they inhabit.

> I don’t think the sentiment is that they “deserve to suffer” so much as “why should I be subsidizing the comfort of a group that is so aggressively antisocial?”.

What is the effective difference between believing someone deserves to suffer, and purposefully withholding aid that could be rendered? One might be dressed up in more comfortable language, but they both result in homeless people not being helped on purpose.

Homeless people have objectively been let down by society, of course they're antisocial. They're hungry, exposed to the elements, and treated like garbage by most people they interact with. Every single one of us would behave in antisocial ways if we were in that situation. If you want them to change, you have to begin changing the circumstances that motive their current behavior. Denying aid until they change is just a polite way to deny aid permanently.

> What is the effective difference between believing someone deserves to suffer, and purposefully withholding aid that could be rendered?

This is silly. By your logic we in the Western world are essentially causing the suffering of the Uyghurs in China because we haven't started a war to stop their oppression.

You aren't complicit just because you don't try to fix every wrong in the world.

The real world is difficult and involves suffering, pain, unfairness, etc. Our resources to limit these negative aspects of existence are finite. When we view someone "suffering" and see it as the result of their own actions, yea, I think we are even more reluctant to do anything.

All that to say: Good luck convincing people that they should allocate scarce resources to help out the people who throw containers of urine at them and defecate on the sidewalk in front of their apartment.

If you agree homelessness is an issue than the right attitude to have is to reduce it no? The Finland solution actually works, so do it regardless of how you feel about it? Anything short of that means you actually don't want it to get better.

>If you agree homelessness is an issue than the right attitude to have is to reduce it no?

Back in the mid 1980s, the Village Voice[0] ran a feature article entitled "What do homeless people want?"

The author helpfully provided an answer in the first sentence of the article: "Homes, mostly."

Given the very visible homeless population in New York City[1] at the time, and that more and more of those folks were families with children, it seemed a reasonable question to ask, with a readily available answer.

And in 2000, there was a piece in the San Jose Mercury News[2] about full-time school teachers working in the San Jose public schools who were living in homeless shelters because they couldn't afford housing on their salaries in the South Bay.

And yet, 30+ years later the problem is getting worse -- due to the lack of affordable housing stock, increasing economic insecurity and inequality, among other, lesser, issues.

So let's not continue to believe the Grimm-esque fairy tale that poor people are poor because they're lazy or stupid. And that all homeless people are drug-addicted, mentally impaired losers.

So what is it that homeless people want? Homes, mostly.

Yet our zoning and housing policies make increasing housing stock to meet demand and effectively difficult, if not impossible.

Yes, homelessness is a serious issue. And something I experienced back in those fabled 1980's. And I did have a drug (cocaine) problem while I was homeless. Then again, I didn't start using those drugs until I was already homeless. Hmmm. Correlation isn't causation, but...

[0] https://www.villagevoice.com/

[1] https://citylimits.org/2013/03/11/a-brief-history-of-homeles...

[2] https://www.mercurynews.com/

I’ll go back to what I noted in my original comment: “why should I subsidize the comfort of people who are so aggressively antisocial?”

This group has generated so much negative goodwill with the general public that any “logical” solution that requires public $ is going to have a difficult time prevailing.

The easiest and intuitively cheapest solution in the minds of most people is: make them go somewhere else.

I don’t think homeless people should suffer but there should be rules. Instead of allowing people to ruin a sidewalk by storing 100 stolen bicycle scraps and other trash, they should be relocated to safe sleeping sites. Should tax payers have their view ruined, live in stench, and have HIV positive schizophrenic folks with an ax running into their place of business? My friend owns a business and had to stop selling merchandise due to theft. This literally happens daily here. The mayor doesn’t want to place some of these people in conservatorship which is what’s required at a certain point.

(I’m aware I’ll be down voted by people who do not live here, haven’t had to call the cops for help themselves, and think I am just exaggerating)

Your comment seems to suggest you don't actually want the situation to get better, you want people to suffer for some reason. The point is the Finland solution actually works and that's why it should be done.

I literally stated I do not want them to suffer. I am not arguing against sleeping sites I clearly stated I am in favor of them

I am just stating if someone refuses the safe sleeping sites and continues to break into yoga studios and throw feces and blood at people, maybe there ought to be a backup “solution”.

Why does homelessness become an excuse to commit crimes? We can both help homeless people and also not make them immune to laws.

Why should my neighbor who is wheelchair bound have no access to her sidewalk because a homeless guy is storing 100 stolen bicycle wheels on the sidewalk?

I specifically want more safe sleeping sites, but I also want people arrested if they refuse the safe sleeping site and choose to be a menace to a society.

Very cool application of the "Principle of charity".

May be I can clarify, when I said, "it suggests..." I probably should have said that if you follow the logic all the way through, they don't want to actually solve the issue. Who cares about how you feel? Do you want to solve homelessness or do you not? What other alternative is there?

> No city has managed to solve the homelessness problem with anti-sleeping architecture and police crackdowns, but they’ll keep trying.

That isn’t true, of course they’ve solved their problem using such measures…by pushing them to another city. For example, Bellevue WA will have the riot squad out pretty quickly if you so much as lay down on a bench, and it works since Seattle WA is right across the lake.

> The majority sentiment appears to be that homeless people deserve to suffer to some degree

As far as I can tell, San Francisco doesn't seem to believe this. San Francisco does seem to collectively believe that adding housing is an abomination to avoided at all costs and that helping the homeless is a moral imperative.

> The majority sentiment appears to be that homeless people deserve to suffer to some degree, and that without pain they’ll never be properly motivated to get a job and rejoin society.

I don't think this is true at all. Citation is needed for this.

Majority among who? People in SF?

> Our revealed preference

Is this revealed preference? It's clearly due to political drag, corruption, hubris, or something that is not necessarily preferences of individuals in SF.

It's not like people aren't trying. IIRC Marc Benioff (who I have no particular love for) donated 30 million to homelessness "research" to UCSF, and 17 million to various direct programs. Last homeless point in time count estimates 8k homeless in SF; let's round up to 10k; leaving aside the soft corruption that might have gone into that grant (come on, we have a probably 80% correct model of what causes homelessness), that's TWO PEOPLE who could have given enough money to go a third of the way to paying $1500mo/homeless person rent. estimating that the all-in cost for social services per person is a generous $1000/mo.... it seems that this situation is eminently solvable.

In any democratic system the government exists with the consent of the majority of people. If solving the homeless is a priority for the constituents, they can vote out the ruling government as punishment. That hasn't happened yet, indicating it's just not a high priority for most people living in SF. The gap between voicing an opinion and taking action is large.

Of course voting out the ruling government might mean voting in someone they disagree with on other issues, but this is why single issue voters get more things done politically than their "wiser" counterparts who try to consider all the variables.

It's the same with the various opinion polls that make headlines showing "75% of Americans want X, so why is the government still refusing?" The simple answer is far less than 75% are willing to base their vote solely on X, whereas the opposition often is.

> In any democratic system the government exists with the consent of the majority of people.

This is incomplete to the point of being incorrect. The correct version is:

> In any democratic system the government exists with the consent of the majority of people who happen to have the time/energy/intelligence to research candidates and physically cast a vote in spite of various barriers to voting, choosing from among the small number of candidates who happen to be running.

Sure, but so long as the democracy is still technically functioning those laws can be changed with enough support. Most of the barriers in place, whether they should be there or not, are not insurmountable.

I guess I'm defining consent as "anything less than a desire for violent overthrow of the government" because that's the primary problem democracies solve. Things can still get bad to the point where in any other system a violent rebellion would take place, it's just that in a functioning democracy there's a bloodless rebellion at the ballot box instead of a civil war.

This is really a curse of the two-party system, although California has open top-two primaries so you'd think they'd be less susceptible to this issue.

Even multi-party systems suffer from this. You will never have enough parties to satisfy everyone on every issue. It's also worsened by the multiple years between elections, the feedback cycles are very slow, and too much is muddled together when there's an election.

I would have said the solution is referendums, where the population can regularly vote on some specific issue. But as far as I understand California's "proposition" fit this, and they don't really seem to work.

Referendums are flawed because

* referendums, as a single-issue-only vote, suffer when an electorate is only thinking about immediate first-order effects, and due to how many issues are happening at the same time it's also very easy to get voter fatigue. WA has been through a few cycles for lowering car tab fees to $30, it ends up being ruled unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court due to procedural errors, and in the meantime it totally wrecks budgets. But who would vote down a tax cut for themselves even if the final figure has no bearing on reality? Similar story with Prop 13 and all the nasty knock-on things it has caused.

* referendums only represent a snapshot in time, but due to inertia it is hard to change it. Is Scotland going to get a second vote after Brexit? Who knows? New Caledonia is trying a third time in three years for an independence referendum.

California has been single party for quite some time. Much like “united russia” in Russia.

If different factions in a party can put forward different people who can make it to the top two, the open primary makes the point moot as long as they disagree enough.

The religious and more recently nativist turns that the GOP has taken nationally have made them uncompetitive in California; it's notable that the last Republican governor of California was neither of those things while that transition was happening.

> Of course...

so, in short, it's not revealed preference.

Depends on how you define "preference". Any number of people would "prefer" any number of things in a vacuum that fall apart when put up against the real world. That's not a particularly useful definition of "preference". I'd argue what people truly "prefer" is revealed by what they are willing to take action on.

Many people prefer that china not torture uighurs, but they are, understandably, not willing to take action on it.

Preferences are not 'revealed' by action because even if we were hyper rational, action would take into account expected success, which may be depressed by factors that have nothing to do with our preferences.

I reject your operational definition of preferences. I Think most people would be with me on this one.

An important difference is that Helsinki regularly has temperatures down to -7°C or 19.4°F in the winter, on average. While you can live in tents at those temperatures, given well insulated sleeping bags and clothes, it's not exactly comfortable. And for people with drug or mental issues it can be deadly, say, if they're too far gone to take the proper precautions. Meanwhile San Fran winter temps are as far as I can see about 14°C or 52.2°F on average. But yeah, if the cost you're indicating is true, then it's completely outrageous. Though it's not the first time I've heard about high costs involved with social cases in the West. I suspect some of it is political, but some might also be due to simple profiteering since these people doesn't exactly present a strong political lobby themselves.

> and (I'm not sure why) 24/7 security staff

Are you trying to make some sort of point with a show of feigned ignorance, or do you really not get it? Security is the second rung on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, one of the most basic needs.

You may as well write "and (I'm not sure why) water". Baffling. Any human being should be able to understand this need without having it explained to them.

The causes of homelessness may be different in SF vs. Finland. Mental health & drug addiction are common problems among long-term homeless in the US. Resolving homelessness requires better solutions to those issues as well.

You need both, like here in Finland. E.g. see info on housing under https://www.espoo.fi/en-US/Social_and_health_services/Health...

Thanks for the reference, pretty much as I would expect things to be. Homelessness doesn't just happen, there's a cause that must be dealt with.

As far as I can see, Finland has some of the lowest drug abuse in the world, so it stands to reason that providing homes is more affordable for them. As far as I remember, they used to have a bigger problem with alcohol than their Nordic neighbours, but I'm unsure if this is still the case.

Renters would rather have empty rooms than homeless. No commercial renter references, no full time employment, even a hint of "homeless" = no apartment.

Friend in Canada is purely disabled along with their relative, and lives on disability - which is guaranteed rent. Renters wanted nothing to do with them. They had to go to a government agency that locates housing based on income, and they only got that because their parents cosigned and the landlord was nice.

The hardest part of dealing with homelessness in America is that homeless people will migrate to the best areas to live and beg, which unfortunately also means that certain cities become targets to bear the brunt of the nation's homeless expenses, which incentivizes them to try to push out homeless to make other city's/state's problem. Finland is smart by making this a nation-wide solution.

Why don't all of EU's homeless simply migrate to Finland then?

There's a bunch of complexity in EU law around certain benefits, housing and unemployment benefits among them.

Those who weren't already resident in Finland, Finland doesn't have any responsibility towards.

unfamiliarity of culture and language probably plays a big role compared to the US, where everything is available in English by default. A large amount of Finns speak English, but then that would require a person moving there to also speak English well, which I wouldn't say is a given.

Also, compared to the moderate Mediterranean climate of, say, SF, Finland has very harsh winters, which would make it very unattractive for sleeping outdoors.

Language and cultural barrier. Moving between EU countries is a much bigger psychological deal than between US states.

Also, Finland’s weather is a negative if you are homeless.

"You cannot secure your means of support with benefits paid by the society."

See more info under "income requirement" under https://migri.fi/en/residence-permit-on-other-grounds

Sure, you can apply for e.g. political asylum, but even then some restriction apply.

Freedom of movement is conditional, you cannot be an undue burden on social assistance system of the host member state, which you are if you are homeless and don't have any job.

> For this, the city pays around $60k per tent site per year. I'm not sure if this is in part due to some unsavory relationship between the org administering the program and some city official. Recently the program was extended. It would be cheaper to rent apartments at current market rates, even in San Francisco.

60k per tent site, as in - multiple, like a dozen, tents? Or 60k per tent?

60k per single tent

Wow, that's almost double the median individual income.

Consider whether you would be safe sleeping there in a tent? And how about keeping all your stuff there too? Some neighbors may have mental issues, there may be a criminal element (crime is high in San Francisco), and others (who aren’t dangerous, or even if they are) need to be protected from them.

So I’m not sure this is best thought of as similar to normal housing or similar to a campsite where they can easily kick out anyone dangerous since they’re far away from the city. Instead you might compare with hospitals, nursing homes, or even prisons, but in primitive conditions and without the necessary security infrastructure. The costs aren’t going to be similar.

Actual walls and doors with locks would probably help a lot to reduce the staffing needed.

I think you are absolutely right. The difference is culture. The US culture is anti-poor while the Finish culture is pro-human. The US culture is “only these tools are allowed to solve problems” and the Finish culture is “do what works”. The US culture is “better to spend 10x more money than give people free money - even if spending 10x more money doesn’t solve the problem” while the Finish culture is “that is just silly.”

Currently people experiencing homelessness can effectively sleep anywhere without being sweeped by the city. The police department lets me know they cannot physically move the tents without an eviction process and can only issue a misdemeanor which only entails fines that these people most likely will not pay anyway. The police department lets me know this is Chessea Boudin’s policy and that all they can do without a court order is ask the homeless people to move nicely. By Fulton and Great Highway there are often lines of cars to buy drugs from people living in this one RV who apparently have a “right” to be there. Police state the individuals turn down the help offered by the homeless outreach team. The individuals turn the area into a literal dump, junk yard, and trap.

(I’m aware I’ll be down voted by people who do not live here, haven’t had to call the cops for help themselves, and think I am just exaggerating)

For the record, this kind of thing is absolutely happening in San Francisco, and it’s happening in other West Coast cities as well, like Portland. The OP is a little off in their attribution. The biggest cause of this is the 9th Circuit ruling in Martin v. Boise, which dictated that cities cannot force a person not to camp on public land unless they can offer a meaningful alternative. Cities have built their own policies to deal with this, and then multiple cities on the West Coast also elected progressive District Attorneys, who explicitly consider things like what the OP is describing to be “non-violent” crimes, and therefore not a priority. Here’s what San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin said about this:

“We will not prosecute cases involving quality-of-life crimes," he said. "Crimes such as public camping, offering or soliciting sex, public urination, blocking a sidewalk, etc., should not and will not be prosecuted. Many of these crimes are still being prosecuted; we have a long way to go to decriminalize poverty and homelessness.”

That’s a noble goal, but it comes with a HUGE blind spot - namely the intersection of homelessness and criminality. The apparent implication is that the citizens impacted by these “quality of life crimes” can go pound sand.

How many tents fit in one of those sites? $5K a month for maybe 50 people seems pretty affordable ($100/mo)?

It's 60K PER tent!

It's 5k/mo/tent, not 5k/mo total.

"Our revealed preference seems to be that we'd rather have homeless people live in tents than have poor people get free or nearly free housing."

Well, I'm sick of your preferences; they make no sense to me.

I'm being facetious, but why talk that way? You are an individual. If you have an opinion state it.

Government and its decisions are not you, you do not need to pretend that you agree with these decisions, or that they are somehow the result of a benign expression of voting decisions that you are bought into.

> I'm being facetious, but why talk that way? You are an individual. If you have an opinion state it.

This phrasing makes clear the policy preference of the polity of San Francisco while also implying that the author does not agree with it.

As you say, the author is an individual and does not need to pretend to agree! This author seems to agree with you. They have expressed their opinion as well as noted that of of the polity.

Presumably this is the source for that number, for those who might be interested in digging further:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/article/S-F-pays-61-000-a-...

> the city pays around $60k per tent site per year

Is this number missing a zero? That sounds very reasonable for use of land and 24/7 security. And at $5k a month I'm not sure how many apartments you can afford. Or is that meant to be $60k per tenant? How many people can you house in one of these sites?

It’s $5k per tent per month - you can rent 2-3 studios for that, even in SF. A similar program in LA is coming in at $2100 per rent per month, definitely enough for at least one apartment: https://ktla.com/news/local-news/east-hollywood-tent-village...

That’s the point the original article made - they were throwing money at short-term shelters and other things, just like everyone else and the problem got worse not better. Instead, doing stable housing first and applying conditions later allowed people to adapt. I suspect that they also get to re-use units the NGOs bought to house next set of people once the initial occupants have improved their situation enough.

If one were to use the $2100 for mortgage payment as well, with taxes/hoa/insurance included, that would finance over $400k worth of unit.

Landlords aren't going to be so keen on letting the homeless be shoved in their rentals when they'll likely be filled by non-homeless soon enough.

Have you heard of Section 8? There are landlords who specialize in such programs - the benefits are quite compelling for the right cashflow setup, taking the Finnish model as the example: you rent to the NGO that has government backing (e.g. risk of nonpayment goes to near zero), the NGO assumes all risk and is responsible for the unit. That’s a pretty great deal compared to the Landlord being responsible for vacancy, individual tenant management, etc.

Plus here in Finland the city owned apartments etc. are distributed around the city (not the Manhattans but the rest). Thus there are no slums in Finland and thus there's practically zero gang problems: there's exactly two city districts in the entire Finland I would not feel safe walking at night. So individuals renting to NGOs, city buying apartments etc. benefit both the community as well as the individual who gets out of the crayfish trap.*

*There's a popular analogy with crayfish traps here in Finland wrt. one individual finding their way out of the trap, only to have the other crabs pull them back in.

Sorry, I was speaking specifically with regards to San Francisco w/the parent. And yes, I believe there is some Sec 8 in SF, but not exactly the point of the current issue.

"Tent site" usually means "place for a single tent". If grandparent has the usual usage, it's $60k/tenant, unless people are sharing tents.

Thank you for the clarification, that makes much more sense.

is per tent site === one single 'parking space' for one homeless person's tent? if so it's outrageous.

Even if it means say a parking lot for 20, that seems pretty crazy. You can just give $2k to buy an apartment, if you are puritan and have to control whether or not they spend it on substances just pay the landlord directly. Probably has to be a place that can get cleaned up easily though after they move on.

It can't possibly be $60K just to provide 24/7 security for a year for a whole location, right? That's a bare minimum of 5 full-time employees, but more likely 6 to 8.

How much does a set of bullet proof window for a tiny one-bedroom apartment, and a security door cost? Guarded tent-site sounds like pouring truckloads of money to the sea.

That amount of money buys a lot of tiny houses - maybe 2 for $60k.

$60K per tenant

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/S-F-officials-w...

> For this, the city pays around $60k per tent site per year

Is that 60k per tent site or per tent?

A lot of them don’t want the free housing because they are not allowed to do their vice indoors. Can’t smoke or shoot up illicit drugs so they opt to not take the free housing.

How does it only cost $60k when 1 individual security guard would be homeless earning only $60k themselves in a year in San Francisco?

people living in tents in SF are not just “poor” - many have severe mental health issues and drug addiction. In fact, many are there because of SF’s open-air drug market.

My point is that the program you mentioned is even crazier and more cruel and wasteful. We need many of these people booked into the rehab (mandatory if needed) and then subsidize cheap apartments for them.

With that 60k number on the table Im wondering where people think a universal basic income might fit into this discussion?

UBI would work well for some homeless and would be a disaster for others (those with severe substance abuse issues).

What's the actual percentage of homeless people with severe substance abuse problem (i.e. one where its ~daily and they wouldn't agree to treatment)?

This comment makes it sound like it applies to something like 50% of SF homeless and that can't be right.

It actually is about 50%:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...

For the long term chronic homeless, pretty high (that and/or mental illness). For the less chronic short term homeless, not high at all (or they wouldn’t be short term).

It is nearly impossible for an entity (city or state), with a limited budget and no borders to enforce, to provide a perfect solution. The “country” on the other hand is a completely different matter..

> Our revealed preference seems to be that we'd rather have homeless people live in tents than have poor people get free or nearly free housing.

The reason why such programs exist in the first place is because of San Francisco's highly liberal government. There is no doubt that the politicians would absolutely love to give people houses for free, but they can't because that would be even more expensive.

The San Francisco system is flawed by design. It's not economical to support people with welfare because America is not a communist nation. Homelessness should not be considered to be primarily the government's problem. If the economy is strong, homelessness as a problem will largely disappear and charities will take care of the rest of them.

> To that, they add chemical toilets, a water supply and (I'm not sure why) 24/7 security staff. For this, the city pays around $60k per tent site per year.

This is ridiculous, it's more than enough for annual rent of a very decent apartment.

The fact that a mighty country of America can't fix such a trivial problem shocks me.

With countless billions thrown onto the problem, they can equally well build a few blocks of luxury skyscraper apartments, and give them away.

Literally, for these money you can build an apartment block somewhere in Dubai.

You going to put a parking lot full of people into an apartment?

I mean such money will be enough for multiple apartments.

And with West Coast states allegedly spending countless billions on "doing something" about homelessness, just giving away luxury apartments doesn't sound that crazy in comparison to these digits.

> $60k per tent site per year...It would be cheaper to rent apartments at current market rates, even in San Francisco.

That's $5k per month. Absolute best case, that's two one-bedroom apartments, so 6 people? Surely there are more than 6 people at the tent site.

No, the price seems to be $5k per _person_ per month: https://californiaglobe.com/section-2/sf-homeless-department...

At those prices some consultant/contractor/vendor must be getting outrageously rich.

I always wonder what is the point of progress if we can't use it to solve basic problems like people not having food, shelter or access to basic medical help.

I'd guess it's all about individual vs collective progress. I've realized that places with homogeneous demographics (e.g. nordics) are usually those interested in solving what you call basic problems while the focus tends towards individual progress wherever people look less alike.

I guess there must be well understood tribe/ethnic reasons to explain that.

Nordic countries are kinda special in this regard. Historically, you were very unlikely to survive in northern climate on your own. Being part of community was necessary prerequisite for survival.

I have been on couple trips to northern Norway/Sweden. People there did not even have locks in their houses, it wasn't even necessary. I wonder if it changed now with advent of migrations from eastern Europe and Middle East.

Same in Northern Canada. When buying a house there usually at the end of the financial part of the transfer of a house you get the keys. The previous owners rather sheepishly admitted they didn't have them. Lawyer pipes up 'then we'll have to change the locks'. Owners say that's going to be a lot of work because the doors never had any locks in the first place. We kept it like that.

I can't even imagine not changes the locks on a house you just bought. (Unless, as in your case, locks aren't even desired.) Even if the previous owner had no malicious intent, they might have accidentally kept a key that someone else could get ahold of... Or they might have given out a key, etc. There's no good reason to avoid it, IMO.

As a middle point, I’ve been living at my house in the Midwest for 4 years now and while we have locks, I didn’t changed them out from the previous owners. I suppose they could have some extra keys but I trust that they don’t and won’t come into my house (and unless they’re playing a really long game, they haven’t, and the previous owners live fairly close as we got some letters from their child’s daycare accidentally sent to us).

What makes you think Middle Eastern or Eastern Europeans specifically would change anything?

The last time I paid attention to statistics, in Norway the migrants were a small minority of inhabitants but large majority of all crimes.

As a note, the people who like to "do crime" for some reason are not willing to move up north and prefer to stay in Oslo.

To understand the parent commenter's question (in a US-centric way) you have to examine the political-economic parallels, historical and contemporary, between the US and Nordic countries and decide whether the same structures and conditions exist or not. Presumably, the parent commenter was hinting at the way by which US elites in the 1600s developed a theological basis for social-economic stratification which divided and maligned non-property holders in order to maintain the status quo the effects of which reverberate to this day. Nordic countries, being perceived by the US as being racially homogeneous presumably wouldn't have be susceptible to the same divisive forces, but with shifting racial demographics, inch themselves closer to those same initial conditions.

To answer the original question, it depends on the likelihood that social divisiveness foments either spontaneously or cultivated purposefully. Someone with more knowledge on topics like the Sweden Democrats, Norway's Progress Party and their progress toward social division would be better at addressing it than me.

Also curious why he forgot about all the migration from Africa. Everyone locks their doors here in Africa and builds cages around their houses effectively.

As a point of comparison, North America has harsh winters that can be difficult to survive if one is unprepared. Many (a majority of?) early European colonists died within a year of arrival for this reason. Indigenous peoples were instrumental in their coming to understand the cultural and behavioral changes that needed to be made for Europeans to survive in America at the technological level they were at. This did not foster a communal spirit, however; the general rule seems to be that European diseases decimated Indigenous populations, and many (though not all) of the survivors were slaughtered in land disputes. Curiously, there are cases up and down the East Coast of European-Native American integration; it would be interesting to see why they were different, and where the tipping point between true communal integration and simple appopriation is when survival is on the line.

That also seemed to be the norm in northern Spain not so long ago, none of my grandparents (maternal/paternal side) locked their doors, even at night.

People don’t lock their doors in many parts of America either like safe suburbs.

My house growing up couldn’t really even be properly locked up. You could lock the door but the first floor windows and sliding door on the deck didn’t lock at all.

That was also the case in France at least till the 50/60s

Where I grew up in the US - Appalachia - in the 1980s and 1990s it was common to not lock your house or car. Crime was rare, murder was non-existent, homelessness didn't exist, and drugs weren't a problem yet. In my neighborhood everybody knew everybody else, all working class types (mixture of middle class and lower middle class mostly), it simply wasn't much of a concern.

Small groups of people with intimacy and a culture of low rates of crime. Violence or crime would make you an immediate outcast.

I'm not sure about that because places like Japan, Korea and the UAE are very ethnically homogeneous, but my impression is that they are quite individualistic. Although from skimming Wikipedia, Korea and Japan have extremely low levels of homelessness so maybe there is a link!

Korea and Japan are usually some of the first examples when discussing individualistic vs collectivistic cultures, where they are examples for colectivistic cultures.

I think half the success of this approach is due to culture as well. I know in my home country, an approach like this would definitely not work and you'd be stuck with unemployed squatters with slow legal recourse to get rid of them (and if you have to get rid of them are you really successful in the first place?).

Most definitely. You see this effect within Amazon fulfilment centers too. More ethnic diversity is correlated with less willingness to unionize on an inter-center basis.

Unions depend on a feeling of we are all together, so diversity is one possible Union killer. There are others, and unions need other things, but a sense of togetherness is part of it

Unions have also historically been pretty racist--explicitly excluding anyone who wasn't a white male. That's probably less the case today, but they're still dominated by white, socially conservative men.

That's actually a good anti-diversity argument (not saying that's necessarily your intent). Japan is another, similar example re: "solving what you call basic problems".

The bigger the country, the more diverse their population is, and empathy is less generalized. Colonizers used ethnic cleansing as a workaround, but as the population grows, it starts differentiating again.

It seems nations, like people, can get too big for their own health.

Lets consider more common case with working poor. At the same time we see high income inequality. We see unemployment. We see that productivity is a few times higher than it was in 1930. What is the solution? I think you know it, it was done once, 100 years ago. The work day was reduced to 8 hours/day. It could be reduced now to say 4 hours/day. No wage cut. In the past, who reduced the work day? The workers organized and reduced the work day. Why they do not do that? I think they do not know that they can work less. They still think they need to work more to produce all the food, more houses, etc. While in reality they produce income inequality, lots of bullshit jobs and unemployment.

You can help, agitate, organize, join union for shorter workday same wage.

There are also far fewer barriers to working with people around the world who don't demand nearly so much as you are, than there were in 1930. We could put some up, but it's not as just simple as saying "we want twice the hourly wage and half the workday".

Cheap international flights, instant high fidelity telecommunication, standardized container shipping, and streamlined trade with low trade barriers are just a few of the things that have made it less necessary to find workers locally.

A point on the 8 hour work day, because a lot of people will instantly think "Ford", is that it took decades of union campaigning, and quite a few dead and injured in clashes with police and Pinkerton agents, to start getting traction. By the time Ford shortened his working hours, the unions had already gotten hours cut a lot and put in a huge amount of effort changing the narrative on working hours.

Most people are also unaware that May 1st as the international day for labour demonstrations is in part in commemoration of the Chicago Haymarket Massacre, and as the starting point for a renewed fight for the 8-hour working day in its aftermath, on the request of the AFL president at the time.

It's almost like the problem's harder than it seems at first glance or something

The most difficult problems in life are sometime political, not physics or technical challenges.

Not sure why you are getting downvoted, obviously you are right.

Now, the political problem reflects us as people. If people wanted the problem solved, politicians would find a way to solve it for the sake of their own interest.

The way I understand it is that most people are really selfish in that they only care about themselves and maybe family and friends.

And it doesn't get any better because people are more and more focusing on themselves and getting cut off from community.

The first job is buy-in. When a society collectively chooses to solve some difficult problem, it gets solved, no matter how hard it is. Apollo program or homelessness.

Back in reality, the majority of society was opposed to the Apollo program (even after the successful landing support was only lukewarm) and I have no difficulty thinking of difficult problems with enormous societal buy-in and vast funding that proved intractable.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/moond...

When was the last time somebody stepped on the moon? If that's success criteria, we just need to stick all the homeless in a hotel for a night, declare the problem solved, then kick them out in the morning.

It depends on the kind of problem. An engineering challenge, even a really difficult one, is something that can be attacked with effort. Changing human beings is far far more difficult. Perhaps impossible on timescales less than generations.

We’ve had societies that really wanted to stop people from using mind altering substances, agree with that goal or not it was something that multiple societies choose to try to solve and mostly they failed. The ones that partly succeeded were the ones that used heinously brutal methods.

I don't buy it. Apollo almost failed many times by administrative churn and lack of public support. Apollo was successful because of passionate engineers working on the problem not by public support

Their passion helped, but it consumed 4.4% of the US federal budget at peak and might well have been cancelled if JFK hadn’t been assassinated — for basically the same reason no human has returned there since Apollo or gone to Mars at all, and for the same reason Space Station Freedom was cut back and morphed into the ISS — or if NASAs work hadn’t been deliberately spread through most states to make it a pork barrel for senators looking to boost their own state using the Federal budget.

It’s basically only now that we have a new space race run by absurdly rich space-nerds that we don’t need active public support, merely that the criticism is limited to grumbling.

The engineers did not pay for the project or their salaries. And certainly they weren't working for free or even under market rate.

Or cancer! Oh oops

5-year survival rates have improved — for some cancers — in adolescents and young adults https://sph.unc.edu/sph-news/5-year-survival-rates-have-impr...

Cancer is many things rather than one, and some of those things have been solved.

Cancer is a hugely complex problem. It is not a single attack vector like a virus.

But we are still making great progress on it, just think that the best vaccines for Covid came as fruit of cancer research.

Certainly half of it is. Unfortunately, it's not the half of the problem that progress is helping with since we're not for a lack of productive output or a dearth of needless waste.

Nah, these are two separate problems. First is the technological problem of producing enough food, building material, medicine, etc. Then there is the problem of the political class not unwilling to fund infrastructure and projects to put this technology in use.

Think of it like a software team that has excellent developers but terrible devops. The developers have long long since fixed many of the bugs and implemented most of the features, but the devops is slow, corrupt, and incompetent so very few of the features actually make it to production.

> Nah, these are two separate problems. First is the technological problem of producing enough food, building material, medicine, etc.

There is no technological problem. We are already wasting more food that would be necessary to feed people who are starving.

Even USSR, at the height of its inefficiency, was able to build housing for most of its inhabitants. It wasn't palaces but it did its job.

And when we need we can somehow find a way to crank out vaccine to vaccinate entire countries. And these are given out for free (of course, we pay for them in taxes, but still it can be done...)

> Then there is the problem of the political class not unwilling

I think you meant "willing".

Here, this is the problem.

When you say it is "political class", what you really say it is not your problem. And this is the cause of why this is not getting solved.

Because the problem is really you and other people like you who think it is not their problem.

If the people decided it is a problem worth solving and supported it with their votes, the "political class" would follow and solve the problem.

The "political class" responds to what is on peoples minds and to what people want. If people decide to spend their focus quabbling over building big walls or election results or vaccine efficacy, guess what is not getting solved? Anything else isn't getting solved.

In USSR and many other countries of the Soviet Bloc, it was also illegal not to work.

Exceptions applied (mothers with young kids, registered artists), but otherwise this was enforced and if you stayed out of work for a certain period and didn't have a valid employer stamp in your papers, you would be chucked into prison for Parasitism (that was the name of the crime).

As a result, the Bloc had almost no visible homelessness, but this kind of solution would probably not fly in the West.

> Even USSR, at the height of its inefficiency, was able to build housing for most of its inhabitants. It wasn't palaces but it did its job.

Roof over the head sure does the job. But in exchange a big portion of USSR population lived in essentially shared housing. You get a room and shared amenities (shared kitchen, shared shower, shared WC). In most career paths it would take a decade or more to be eligible for an apartment. And that apartment would be tiny. Got a kid? Great, you go up the queue and you get 1 room (kitchen + room, no living room) apartment! Got 2 kids? Nice, you get 2 rooms (not 2 bedrooms).

Of course, in some career paths it was much more comfy. A nuclear power plant built in bumfucknowhere? Well, anybody willing to go there even for an unqualified job gets a super spacious (compared to above) apartment on arrival. In exchange someone in a big city with no kids may be stuck in shared housing whole life with no chance to have his own apartment.

The technological problem (assuming it exists, which I tend to agree it does not) is in logistics, not in production.

Being an immigrant and not allowed to vote, it is not fair to claim I’m responsible for the political class.

Also public opinion rarely results in policy. Most Americans for example favor spending on green infrastructure to tackle the climate crisis, most Americans favor a more universal health care system, etc. yet the political class is hesitant.

We have solved those issues for the vast majority of the country! Heck we provide all of that and more. Now we are even giving welfare payments to middle and upper middle income families(in the form of an enhanced child tax credit).

because those problems involve messy parts of the human experience. math/physics, basic science can be pretty divorced from human sociology/psychology/etc.

you don't need to think of the 2nd/3rd/4th order effects on society if you prove some theorem in number theory.

I think it comes down to 'I work to have what I have, why others should have things for free'. Even though the things you get for working are good and you have a great life, and the free things are shit but let you at least survive just barely, it's still too much. 'If I work to have a great life, those that don't are not eligible for anything, not even the smallest things' and then you can complain about homelessness in your area because it's more important to be able to complain than to solve the issue and get rid of the issue to complain about

you could make a strong argument that humanity has barely progressed socially in spite of vast technological development

I’d argue that progress and “people not having food, shelter, or access to basic medical help” are definitionally incompatible.

What we think of as 'progress' depends on a lot of dangerous and unpleasant labor. It would be difficult to get people to do this labor without the the threat of homelessness and starvation.

Perhaps viewed differently: providing everyone with food, water, power, housing, and medical care takes a lot of unpleasant and coordinated effort and that needs to be paid for somehow.

There are many historical examples of people participating in less-than-ideal labor situations because they were well-compensated and saw that their work would lead to greater prosperity for their community and country. The carrot was enough and the stick superfluous.

Capitalists often fall prey to the notion that hard and productive work isn't being performed unless someone is sacrificing their health or safety or happiness; that's wrong. We can do these things and provide a good life for the people doing them, too. In some cases this will mean that the doing will be its value itself, or even a loss leader for other efforts. That's fine; not everything needs to be profitable to be valuable.

We do all of those things! Medicaid, Section 8, SNAP, SSDI, etc.

world is complex, i'm not excusing but i've seen enough absurdity like these to start to know that, at large scales, simple becomes problematic. money flows where big pockets and trends go, unless it's a country which values a solid higher ground for all, you'll be left out

This is not a new question. In fact, over 100 years ago, a person got really famous writing a book called Progress and Poverty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_and_Poverty

His name was Henry George, and he famously recommended reducing all taxes to one: the land tax. His book was hailed by everyone from Milton Friedman to Leo Tolstoy and US Presidents wrote glowing reviews. And somehow, it is all forgotten today, except among trained economists who had to maybe read it in college. Most libertarians in the US today are capitalist, and have no concept of Georgism or left-libertarianism.

The trouble is that the times of land meaning anything are over.

In today's world of intangible goods you can produce without owning any land.

Why would multi-billion pharma company pay less taxes than a local farmer, because the land needed for offices to run bio-research is less than a small field to grow crops for couple families?

Looking at real estate prices, land is far from worthless.

I am not saying land is worthless. I am saying that owning land is no longer prerequisite for producing a lot.

Two hundred years ago you had to own land to be "big", because most ways to produce anything required land to grow crops or land to extract natural resources or services with connection with those two types of activity.

If you look at top 10 largest companies in the world, only one is tied to a lot of land or services for other companies with lots of land (Saudi Aramco).

Before one hundred years ago the largest companies or wealth creators would inevitably be largest land owners or ones that provide services for largest land owners.

Link to the audiobook for anyone else interested: https://librivox.org/progress-and-poverty-by-henry-george/

Well, technological progress doesn't necessarily cause social progress, but it might allow it though.

It's a problem of values. Despite abundance, people still believe that people who don't work a 9to5 job are not worthy or good treatment.

Most people still believe in a hierarchy of people and values, and that "there is no free meal", except yes, there is: most food is subsidized and cheap.

Like it or not, "Arbeit macht frei" ("Work sets you free") was displayed at the entrance of concentration camps, and I really think that if you ask people around, they would still hold the same opinion that 100% of people should work and that nobody should escape that.

Now, work is divided between "noble" work, which is essentially office work, and "essential" jobs, which are necessary. Like in the middle ages, nobility is better valued because they're privileged.

Society is really upside down, and despite the years of communism and socialism, which are mostly dead now, it seems we haven't really evolved.

> Most people still believe in a hierarchy of people

This is a broad generalization and it varies widely by culture.

Some people believe that all work is important.

Which culture?

> Some people believe that all work is important.

Sure, but I think it's a minuscule part.

Many Western cultures and Christian religious sects. Also more prevalent in countries with free movement of people and ideas.

Very few people living in poverty really wants or chooses to be there. It's usually generational.

The contradiction lies in the fact that people work so they can work less and once there are people that do not have to work then how do they get access to that abundance? Through their own work? That would defeat the point. Through the work of others? The working people will get angry because they want to work and for the sake of fairness, they demand others to work just as hard even if there is no work for them to be done. Yes you can create more work so that everyone has work but what people forget is that you have to create those jobs in the first place.

The reason why politicians should strive for full employment is that abundance of labor leads to desperation, which leads to a worse treatment of workers and thus employers are more willing to waste their time. When there is full employment then labor is scarce and precious, meaning the time of the workers is scarce and precious which means employers will either make sure that the workers are treated well and enjoy their time or at least let their time be used for more "productive" endeavors.

>Society is really upside down, and despite the years of communism and socialism, which are mostly dead now, it seems we haven't really evolved.

They are solving the wrong problem. Really, just make sure basic macroeconomic accounting rules work and everything will be fine. For example: Everything produced must be consumed. When you apply this principle on labor, full employment becomes inevitable. How does our economic system violate that rule? It is possible to earn more than you spend, meaning you produce more than you consume. The excess is the deposit in your bank account. If you don't consume labor through work then it will be consumed by being idle. Thus the real value of your savings is eroding day by day until one day your savings have no value because all the freed time was spent idle.

Thus the logical conclusion is that there must be a deadline for your savings. At some point you must spend them before they lost all their value, not because there is an evil government stealing your money or whatever, because nature is eroding the real value of your money. Labor is spoiling the same way fruit spoil. If you want to save then you should save in real terms. i.e. you use your money to buy goods that last longer than labor (a house or industrial machinery) or a promise of a future payment (bonds or stocks). Saving in real terms leads to the employment of other people rather than their unemployment because it still counts as spending for accounting purposes.

The reason why a gold standard is a stupid idea is that linking money to something like gold will make people hold onto the currency because of the exposure of gold. When gold goes up in value people will stop spending because their nominal wealth is going up even though their real wealth isn't going up. In fact, by not spending your money there will be people that didn't work and your real wealth is actually going down.

There is another reason why spending should be forced or encouraged: Debts create money and repaying them destroys money. Holding onto money prevents debts from being repaid or in other words: The debt will exist as long as the deposit exists. There are obvious implications: Government debt can never go down because deposits never go down because people are not forced to spend them.

The Housing First approach has been around for a while and has plenty of evidence to support it [1]. Good to see further uptake and to see this on front page HN. :)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_First

These programs have existed in several large US cities for over a decade. They’re not well known, though. Usually people who live in a city with one of these programs think that their city is unique for having done it.

The programs do help, but they’re not a magic bullet for all homelessness. I have a group of friends who have made careers in this space. Sadly, getting housing for these people is only half the of the solution. The temporary homeless really do use these housing units as a springboard to get back on their feet, usually moving out as they get their lives in order. The challenge is the rest of the residents who aren’t interested in even free services to help get them change their lives or overcome their issues. It’s also a challenge to get some of the residents to cooperate with the rules of these housing units (which aren’t different than regular rentals, nothing onerous).

> The challenge is the rest of the residents who aren’t interested in even free services to help get them change their lives or overcome their issues.

As I understand it, the trick is to just accept that these people exist and still need a roof over their head. Turns out that’s cheaper than policing them when living on the streets.

I wish there were more in depth articles about these problems. They tend to focus on “feel good” aspects while glossing over the details and trade offs made.

As I get older more and more I find that all new ideas are old ideas. As if great idea just sitting there, oblivious to everyone else, waiting for someone to pick it up.

Often someone else tried the solution but it never worked. What changed? That’s what I want to know.

For example, the article has a click-bait headline that makes you feel good because homelessness “ended”. Apparently homelessness was reduced, not ended. It’s a better outcome than before.

    > In the last 10 years, the “Housing First” program provided 4,600 homes in Finland. While in 2017 there were still about 1,900 people living on the streets, the program could reduce this number to less than 1000 long-term homeless by 2019 – but there were enough places for them in emergency shelters so that they at least didn’t have to sleep outside anymore.

Also, the math is murky. The article states that the direct cost of housing is cheaper than the current expenses. It’s quite easy to figure out the cost of building new things but very difficult for those other services.

    >  Creating housing for people costs money. In the past 10 years, 270 million euros were spent on the construction, purchase and renovation of housing as part of the “Housing First” programme. However, Juha Kaakinen points out, this is far less than the cost of homelessness itself. Because when people are in emergency situations, emergencies are more frequent: Assaults, injuries, breakdowns. The police, health care and justice systems are more often called upon to step in – and this also costs money.

The first book I read that went into these complex issues was “Basic Economics” by Thomas Sowell. He made convincing arguments about how economics work and how of often polices designed to help people hurt them. Rent control in NY was a policy designed to help people but actually made it worse for many.

When and where was it tried before? <1000 homeless sounds like a success.

Just to clarify, in Finland housing and basic living expenses are provided for everyone who doesn't have enough income. Still, there are people who end up on the streets for some reason, and this program is aimed at helping those people.

This is what Sweden did 50 years ago. My Vespa broke down on the way to Paris. I needed money, so I just went to the Göteborg employment office and got a job and an apartment. But all this is now gone. They have huge homeless problem among older ethnic Swedes especially. Because this is HN, I wont go into details and causes and consequences...

Cheaters. You gotta do this a roundabout way, not by just addressing the issue directly.

This is fake news, almost nothing about this article is accurate or factual, homelessness is a problem in this country that usually is unearthed by investigative journalists because apparently we don't have homeless problem so we don't even keep an official record, but we get articles like this to pat ourselves in the back which makes this even more embarrassing. t. a 40yo finn

Are you sure? The graph in the article seems to match a graph on the ARA's website: https://www.ara.fi/en-US/Materials/Homelessness_reports/Repo... (the ARA seem to be the organisation in charge of housing in Finland).

Not that it's completely reliable, but Wikipedia also has information which matches the article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_Finland), no discussion on the talk page, and no signs of an edit war in the history.

Lived in Finland a decade now. There are drunks and drug addicts hanging around on the streets all night and in parks, but I have never once seen someone sleeping on cardboard, or in a sleeping bag on the street. Not once.

They are in the forest, not on the streets. Makeshift or real tent, sleeping bag. I've seen a bunch of this in Espoo and Helsinki, admittedly more in the 80s and 90s than later on. (Whether this development is due to my own situation or that of the homeless people, I don't know.)

Maybe. I mean there's a lot of forest here. But at that point isn't it more of a choice?

I tend to think of the homeless as sleeping in bags or on cardboard in cities, trying to get money for whatever it is they need. I really saw the true meaning of homelessness when I was in Austin.

Links of that investigative journalism would be nice to support your claims of this being fake news.

The Y-Foundation exists https://ysaatio.fi/en/home and they have reports too.

> apparently we don't have homeless problem so we don't even keep an official record

There is an official record by the Housing Finance and Development Center of Finland: https://www.ara.fi/en-US/Materials/Homelessness_reports

More information can also be found at https://housingfirsteurope.eu/countries/finland/

Saying something is fake with your only reference being your claim that "you're a Finn", is pretty much meaningless.

I used to be one of those homeless people that officially don't exist about a decade ago, we didn't exist then and I'm sure they didn't exist now either.

Could you point us to a resource where we can read more about this? Perhaps a source pointing to data being covered up?

what's the general sentiment about homeless in the population ? is it more like "chase them out, i dont care" or "we would like to do something but nothing ever happens" ?

Generally finns want and expect the government to offer everyone in need free housing. When this does not happen everyone is surprised.

When I became homeless and broke I was lucky enough to have a friend who at the time let me use his address to apply for a job

I also tried seeking help from my local authority and was told there wasn't any

2 months of work, couch surfing and eating boiled pasta got me to a stage where I could rent a room

I think that for most, support is all it takes to get back on your feet

By their own data it seems they were able to effectively combat and reduce homelessness long before the 'housing first' strategy, which is worth noting.

Also notably - is that the 'big dent' made by the program is those that are living temporarily with friends, not those on the street.

In fact, those living 'Outside, in temporarily shelters or dormitories' has actually grown quite a lot into 2019.

It's always interesting to see how detailed data sheds insight into big picture schemes.

NYC has right-to-shelter laws, which prevent anyone from being denied access to a homeless shelter. If the shelter runs out of space, they will literally rent out hotels.

I think this is great, and it makes me proud of my city—but frustratingly, there are still beggars on the streets, who for one reason or another have decided not to accept the city's shelter. What has Finland done differently?

I think the answer is in the article. They don't just provide shelters, which have many issues on their own, they put the homeless in apartments with tenant agreements, dragging them back into society.

In most of Europe there are enough shelters for the homeless, but many people avoid them, I'm guessing violence, theft and strict rules is what turns them away. For example, whenever there's a cold snap, the Romanian police is canvasing all the homeless locations and bringing everyone in shelters...I guess they prefer dealing with homeless people rather than dead bodies.

NYC shelters are notoriously bad places to be. I've heard and read many times that the streets tend to be safer and more comfortable. Maybe things are good if you time it just right and get a hotel room during one of those overflow periods.

I'm not sure what the solution to that issue was, but it seems to one of or the main reason why the shelter system does not work like you'd expect.

States side: https://www.tmz.com/2021/03/18/jon-cryer-wife-lisa-joyner-do...

I commend this project. Also personally wish 3D printing homes be formalized, at the very least for single dwelling units. Cities can rezone for it and probably use the land better than golf courses. I'll go on to wish that each SDU is has a cost limit of 10k$ anywhere you go in the country and can only have one human owner. If the unit is to be rented out, then rent would also be capped to number that is reasonable for basic living. The idea here is every adult citizen can own a dwelling. There's may ethical things to consider but pretty optimistic we could come up with good governance policies.

What about people who refuse to use the shelter?

People refuse shelter when it's dangerous to them or comes with prerequesites they cannot fulfill.

I think you can figure out the rest.

Here's an inside view: https://www.reddit.com/r/vagabond/comments/o5yalm/accordong_...

Like, for example, inability to consume alcohol or use drugs, which is half of the reason people in US refuse shelters (the other half is that shelters are full of homeless people).

Yes, a shelter program that does not adress addicts (and keeping them out does not count as "addressing") is in fact designed to fail.

Or designed to handle homeless cases not related to addiction. That the arguments “Not all homeless are drug addicts and/or mentally ill” and “homeless services not designed to deal with drug addiction and/or mental illness will fail” are often located close to each other annoys me. There is plenty of low hanging fruit to be had in dealing with the easier homeless cases. While we shouldn’t ignore the harder cases, it’s no excuse for waiting to pick that low hanging fruit.

The problem is, you cannot (legally) force addicts to stop (in the US). They either accept the help, or they don't. Some do, many more do not.

I once went to talk to a group of homeless guys. That's exactly what they told me as the reason.

They were offered proper apartments, but they refused it because it came with a condition: no alcohol allowed.

Which is precisely why "Housing First" works as a policy; it solves both issues via private apartments.

Housing first works for easier homeless cases that don’t involve substance abuse or severe mental illness (or both). It makes sense to give people housing if they can handle maintaining it on their own. For the harder homeless cases, at best they will sublet for drug money and at worst, the neighbors aren’t going to be very happy. You can’t just handout housing without some treatment or supervision.

Maybe a better title would have been "Finland ends involuntary homelessness".

I got the impression from the article that they would have to go through a social worker and explicitly apply for housing but that it's granted more or less unconditionally. I didn't look into details (actual website is down) but it doesn't seem like it's forced on people in a way that they would have to "refuse" it.

So the homeless are provided an apartment but they still have to pay rent.

The article seems to be missing some key info about how the rent is different from a normal rental.

Y-Säätiö offers non-profit apartments, so the rent is based on cost.

https://m2kodit.fi/en/

I for example found a 35 m^2 apartment in Espoo that's 542 €/month. I rented a similar size apartment in Espoo from a private company for about 800 €/month some years back. The safety deposit is also 0 €. My apartment had a very cheap safety deposit - 200 €, but that is probably too much if you're homeless. Some might charge way more, like two months worth of rent, which would've been 1600 € for me.

They also ignore payment deliquencies, which make it very hard to find an apartment on the free market.

This is a price of 200m^2 flat in the center of Saint Petersburg, Russia. With ~same prices for food that makes ~x3 to the price of food.

In what world this is ok for homeless to pay that much?

Finnish social welfare includes free medical/dental care and drugs. The social welfare and housing support total about 1200€ / month. So after bills, they have between 400-700€ / month for food, clothing etc. It's not anything fancy, but it will keep you off the streets, begging.

There is a good episode about homelessness in the US on the 'You're wrong about' podcast.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/homelessness/id1380008...

In it they cite studies that show that efforts in the US somewhat similar to this Finland program are generally very successful, and typically cheaper overall compared to not having such programs.

The homeless are there, to provide the lowest working-poor caste the illusion, that there is always a even lower station in life that fate could have delt them.

This is an interesting experiment in Minneapolis. I can’t find any earl results yet. What I like is it’s meant to be a transition, not permanent. https://www.freethink.com/social-change/tiny-house-village-f...

It's definitely noticeable as a newly-adopted Helsinkian. I think I might have seen like 3 people on the street asking for change in the last couple of months. And it's the same 3 people...

This reads like one of the silly headlines you'd see in the first iteration of Civilization. Except it's real. And heartwarming!

Finland be like: fuck it, lets just end homelessness by giving everyone a home.

[2020]

Every country should have this. Capitalism is the way to go currently, but make sure the bottom of the food chain is provided for.

lol at people lapping this article up to support their brainwormed political opinions. i actually live here, no homelessness has been ended.

Beyond the clickbait headline, even the article didn't say it was.

Whenever I read articles like “Nordic country succeeds doing X” I always wonder if that would work on a country that is not 6 million people with tons of natural resources available per capita (Oil, timber, ore). Sadly I generally think not, but I’d be happy to be proved wrong …

Finland is not really a country that relies heavily on natural resources.

First page I found ranks the US as having more income from natural resources than Finland.

https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/natural_resources_...

I never understood comparing Finland and other small countries with the US.

Finland's population is less than that of NYC.

That's why you compare per capita.

That's where you learn some systems are just not scalable.

There is a reason why we use complexity measures in computer science.

Why do we assume a-priori all social systems are scalable by 10 to 20 times?

That seems unscientific.

Meanwhile, if I suggested doing housing for all, healthcare for all, etc on an island with only 2000 people, you’d tell me that was too few people and you can’t do it that way. So it seems that the only case where it will work is for a country with the exact number of people in the exact latitude as the countries that are already doing it, which are coincidentally the only places where it has been tried?

Or maybe, you’re just coming up with excuses.

>Meanwhile, if I suggested doing housing for all, healthcare for all, etc on an island with only 2000 people, you’d tell me that was too few people and you can’t do it that way.

No?

> Or maybe, you’re just coming up with excuses.

Where did I say that? Look up logical fallacies.

Why do you assume social systems are easily scalable? That seems like an a priori belief without any scientific support.

Finland has very few people. It's like comparing Luxemburg with India, do you think you can just reapply what works in small countries regardless of scale?

It is measured as percent of GDP, so is not an absolute ranking. So you can absolutely compare Luxembourg to India if you’d like.

But your really can’t. GDP per capita doesn’t capture so many parameters and conditions (like being landlocked surrounded by wealthy countries that use you as a de-facto tax haven)

Oh, I'm glad to learn today that looking at a single variable can erase all the potential differences between countries and culture and bazillions of other factors.

The main reason it doesn't work in US is, you don't tax the rich and corporations like you should, and because your tax dollars are spent on inefficient massive military industrial, intelligence industrial, prison-industrial, and medical industrial complexes, that are effectively theft of government budget. End the limitless corruption and be amazed what you can afford. :)

Homlessness solutions are very expensive and, in countries such as the UK, very inefficiently managed. We have a system here where you can ask for help and if you are classed as vulnerable you often will get it.

The best 'help' is offered to people with kids. This will often be a low budget B&B type accomodation which is usually just one room. It will be a step up from living on the street but only just.

Next best comes to people who've just been released from prison, drug addicts and alcoholics. They may be offered a bed in a hostel full of people with similar problems. Not surprisingly, the sensible ones choose to stay on the street. Those who are truly vulnerable will take the bed and may end up worse off in the long term.

At the bottom of the pile are people who just made a few bad decisions or had a temporary bout of depression. These people are not judged as vulnerable and can literally just go and screw themselves, the system wasn't set up to help these kinds of folks.

Of course, there are success stories where people have worked their way through the system and eventually been offered a state-sponsored place of their own but such stories are not the norm.

I have been homeless and I got lucky, a complete stranger offfered me help and I grabbed it with both hands. I got sweet nothing from any agency - of which their are multiple here. They are part of the problem since they employ lots of people who would never get a job elswhere and have huge cash resources to misappropriate.

I don't know if the Nordic example given here would fare better but it certainly could not do worse.

OCCNS (Our Country Can Never Succeed) Mentality: Our country can never succeed at doing X because our people have the OCCNS mentality.

It's just a bad excuse.

The question is valid, but I disagree with your belief. If anything, I would expect the default outcome of an abundance of natural resources per capita to be Dutch disease: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease

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