If you're literally homeless in Finland you would die during winter season? Could that be a contributing factor to the "success"?
> In 2008, you could see tent villages and huts standing between trees in the parks of Helsinki. Homeless people had built makeshift homes in the middle of Finland’s capital city. They were exposed to harsh weather conditions.
> Since the 1980s, Finnish governments had been trying to reduce homelessness with the building of short-term shelters. However, long-term homeless people were still left out. ...
> But in 2008 the Finnish government introduced a new policy for the homeless with the ‘Housing First’ concept. Since then, the number of people affected by homelessness has fallen sharply.
The tent camps that were common 15 years ago were victims of human trafficking by southern European gangs. They were predominantly from a certain ethnic group from two southern European countries. They are moved to other countries when the weather gets cold and come back in the spring.
Street homelessness was not common before the housing first doctrine, there were shelters.
Housing first is the new doctrine because it is cheaper than shelters in the long run.
Someone living in the streets and shelters is unable to care for themself because they spend all their time, money and effort trying to stay warm, fed and clean. Once they have a place to sleep, cook, wash and keep their stuff safe, they have resources to address their own wellbeing.
When they were sleeping rough, any resources spent on their wellbeing went down the drain. And more resources needed to address the damage to the society.
This is clearly not so, because the source I gave shows long-term homeless people in Finland, who survived winter using "tent villages and huts".
That over a quarter of them were immigrants [1] does not change the fact that they existed, or that almost 75% were not immigrants [2].
> Street homelessness was not common before the housing first doctrine, there were shelters.
Yes, it's a good point that there are many types of homelessness, and living rough/on the streets is only one. But I think that distinction is directed more towards bboygravity?
The link I gave earlier, to https://www.themandarin.com.au/205500-finland-ends-homelessn... , mentions issues going back to the 1980s, which is well before Finland joined the EU:
] Since the 1980s, Finnish governments had been trying to reduce homelessness with the building of short-term shelters. However, long-term homeless people were still left out. There were too few emergency shelters and many affected people did not manage to get out of homelessness: they couldn’t find jobs without a housing address. And without any job, they couldn’t find a flat. It was a vicious circle. Furthermore, they had problems applying for social benefits. All in all, homeless people found themselves trapped.
An emergency shelter like you mention is not a housing address needed for finding a job, thus making it harder to get out of homelessness.
[1] "In 2013 there were almost 2 000 homeless immigrants in Finland. In 2013 the group was more than 25 percent of the total homelessness population." - https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/153258/YMra...
[2] "The shortage of small rental dwellings and very high rents in the metropolitan area, especially in Helsinki, create and sustain youth homelessness.223 Two kinds of groups can be found within youth homelessness: young people who are homeless due to their low level of income and overpriced rental housing, and young people who, in addition to housing, need support services.", same source
> This is clearly not so, because the source I gave shows long-term homeless people in Finland, who survived winter using "tent villages and huts".
The source you gave is an Australian magazine, and what was said in it was not accurate.
There were indeed "tent villages and huts" during that time, but they were 1) there only in the summer 2) predominantly transient people that were a part of a human trafficking scheme from southern Europe.
I do remember these tent villages as there were two near where I lived at that time.
Tent camping is not legal in city areas and they were effectively evicted. There are some transient people still living in allowed camping areas during the summer, but mostly the transient people are now housed somewhere by the people trafficking them.
During the late 20th century there were a few homeless villages built in shacks in urban wastelands (near the airport and close to garbage dump sites) but they were of a more permanent nature.
Winter in Finland is not survivable in a tent without constant heating.
The shacks were built from waste materials and had rudimentary insulation and heating. They were built on waste sites where fuel (wood and garbage) is readily available. The most "famous" site is Simosentie, Vantaa, next to the airport (remains of the "houses" are still there). These shack villages had mostly disappeared by the early 2000s.
The homeless of the 1950s were predominantly war-torn men with mental and addiction problems. Due to their service to their country a decade earlier, Finns adopted an understanding and forgiving attitude to homelessness which is to some degree still present to this date.
Thank you for the correction.
That doesn't change the fact there were still long-term homeless people, contrary to bboygravity's proposition " If you're literally homeless in Finland you would die during winter season? Could that be a contributing factor to the "success"?'
No, it is not.
There are emergency shelters and homeless people take advantage of any warm space they can. At most a few people die of exposure during the winter months (say 1-2 people per year, it makes the news when it happens). The ones who survive the winter in shelters will remain homeless next year.
The reduction in the number homeless is primarily driven by the "housing first" scheme described in the article. The homeless are given supported housing and social work, in that order. Because the other way around (try to "help" first) did not have good results.
Unfortunately not, it's cold but you can endure it, and it'll make you apathetic, and then it's over.
Issue is when you switch between dying and not dying. Like frostbites and so on.
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-homeless-hypotherm...
Also "no money" might mean some but very little money - enough for a bus ticket - some municipalities also solve the homeless issue by just putting them on a bus for free.
The US has many institutional problems in sectors that impact life. No nationalized healthcare, very short training of police officers with no federal standards & longer programs as they have in the EU or other industrialized nations.
We have a prison industrial complex where we imprison more people than ANY other country.
And we now have a fully broken political system. Between Citizens United unleashing unlimited dark money & a 2 party system where it is more important NOT to do anything involving improving things other than tax cuts for our wealthiest.
Homelessness due to unemployment, bankruptcy, medical bankruptcy or mental/psychological issues are obvious results.
There is tremendous room for improvement across all areas, but there is too much institutional & corporate influence in maintaining the status quo.
Vancouver is a mirror of Seattle in its homeless problem, the Canadians handle it better, but the underlying issues are very similar, so it’s not like the USA is fairly special in this regard.
I do question that it's largely the winter weather responsible. Even in places like Chicago, where the winter does get cold enough to quickly kill, there is still a large homeless population, so the weather alone isn't all that's at work. And similarly, Murmansk and Arkhangelsk are also very northerly cities with some serious winter weather, and there were plenty of homeless there too.
There are fewer homeless people here than in many other countries. But that they wouldn't exist is just not true.