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Comment by benrutter | Hacker News Reader

I used to work in social housing The biggest innovation in homeless is the "housing first" policy in Finland. No clever tricks or anything but homeless people are given social housing regardless of engagement with services, addition problems etc. (This is the exact opposite of how things normally work where someone has to engage well with services before being elligible for state housing).

The outcomes are basically as close to ending homelessness as you can get.

Link if people want to find out more: https://www.centreforpublicimpact.org/case-study/eradicating...

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They do have a social worker living near them to make sure they don't burn their place down so it isn't just the cost of housing without any clever tricks at all. See:

> But Housing First is not just about housing. “Services have been crucial,” says Helsinki’s mayor, Jan Vapaavuori, who was housing minister when the original scheme was launched. “Many long-term homeless people have addictions, mental health issues, medical conditions that need ongoing care. The support has to be there.”

> At Rukkila, seven staff support 21 tenants. Assistant manager Saara Haapa says the work ranges from practical help navigating bureaucracy and getting education, training and work placements to activities including games, visits and learning – or re-learning – basic life skills such as cleaning and cooking.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jun/03/its-a-miracle...

1-3 sounds about right.

people without housing may have social workers (or parole officers...). putting them nearby helps them, and helps the locality.

We've gone from 20,000 homeless in the 1990s down to about 4,000 in 2023, so it's very impressive. A large part of the reason is that drug use does not disqualify you from recieving benefits.

It's important to note that fentanyl and methamphetamine are not nearly as widespread in the EU... and no amount of housing can solve a drug problem that causes people to publicly lose their minds. Having grown up during the 80s in America and watched homelessness more or less recede all the way through the 2000s until the opioid explosion, I wonder how the Finnish system will handle it if or when such drugs become widespread among working age people.

It's a good, and concerning, question. Alcohol is our most damaging drug on a collective level here for now, and I'm mostly glad we're starting to get that under control. Alcohol taxes ftw, all my homies love regressive taxation lol

But no, seriously, as an expat who grew up next to some projects I'm personally aware that meth is just in a class of its own when it comes to encouraging antisocial behavior on an individual level.

It's possible to look at America as a kind of "first contact" site for all kinds of social upheavals, positive and negative alike. It's possible the Finnish youth are simply more aware of the disastrous consequences of amphetamine abuse, and so will avoid it more. Truly hard to say.

Opioids are very marginal in Finland. There's no S*klers pushing it into the public health system.

> drug use does not disqualify you from recieving benefits.

and maybe that made drug overdose which resulted in decreasing of homeless people?

Doesn't seem to be any evidence at all of an increase I'm drug overdose related deaths for Finland over the last 10 years: https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/publications/european-drug-repo...

Are they living permanently in the social housing that's supplied? Or are there only 4,000 in the housing?

That's a good question. The number is a little more suspect if someone automatically exits the homeless category as soon as they rent a tiny room with their Kela benefits.

The Housing and Development Centre reports "At the end of 2022, there were 3,686 homeless people living alone in Finland, which is 262 less than in 2021. The number of the long-term homeless was 1,133, which marks a decrease of 185 people."

"Of all the homeless, 70 per cent were temporarily staying with friends or relatives. Dormitories, hostels and different institutions housed 17 per cent of the homeless people. Finally, 13 per cent of the homeless people were living outside, in stairways or in overnight shelters."

So I guess the bulk of that number are short-term homeless people - maybe they got evicted, or lost all their savings or something.

https://www.ara.fi/en-US/Materials/Homelessness_reports/Home...

For a sense of scale, the US has sixty times the population of Finland.

> 3,686 homeless people living alone in Finland

... corresponds to 220k in the US.

> The number of the long-term homeless was 1,133

... corresponds to 68k in the US.

Short term homeless is an interesting demographic to target. I’ve seen some threads talking about being homeless, and a common thread (very anecdotal) that I see repeated is how often a small amount of money was enough to lead to an eviction. I’m curious if there might be value in targeting homeless spending in such a way to try to limit short term homelessness by preventing evictions in the first place.

This is also being done very effectively in some US cities like Houston:

https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/news/how-houstons-homeless-s...

100% this.

It also effectively pays for itself through reduce utilization of other social services: medical, police, legal, food, etc.

It is estimated that a “frequent flier”/ heavy utilization street homeless person can cost a city as much at $1m USD annually.

> It also effectively pays for itself through reduce utilization of other social services: medical, police, legal, food, etc.

No study offers anywhere close to proof of that. First of all by definition of course it’s not paying for itself. These are massive tax expenditures at work. At best these amounts are reduced somewhat. Second, the studies rely on lots of assumptions all down the value chain that a responsible person wouldn’t normally make. The gaslighting by the government, NGOs, and charities feeding at the trough is staggering.

I pay a shitload in taxes. Despite my libertarian leanings, I am not at all adverse about a lot of those taxes going to people who genuinely need it. But there is simply no transparency and no good faith presentation of budgets by any of these organizations.

Why isn’t it working in California?

What makes you think California's programs fit that description? Housing programs in the US and most other countries are viciously means-tested because the necessary long-term investments are not being made to improve capacity to meet demand (on top of the moral arguments involving who "deserves" help based on their backgrounds or struggles).

Senate bill 1380 Section 2.b. https://www.bscc.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/SENATE-BILL-1380....

If you can point to a single housing authority who has implemented such a plan satisfactorily, ie, to meaningfully address homelessness within their jurisdiction following the dictates of that bill, please do let us know. But it's otherwise naive to assume that because a law exists that the state has the resources to enforce it. Virtue signalling pursuant to more-or-less intentionally hamstrung initiatives is rampant in California's legislative bodies.

Where in that bill is the mandate to build or acquire housing adequate for demand? What makes you think legislators aren't savvy enough to understand the consequences of legalistic language and the loopholes it can provide?

Do you actually have a solution or did you just need to vent?

Solutions are a separate question and irrelevant for this comment thread. Do you have any reason to believe that California is comparable to Finland? Or did you just need to vent?

Providing homes ends homelessness.

This is a very naive assertion. Providing homes reduces homelessness but many un-housed individuals will not accept the housing for a number of reasons to include mental illness or the stipulations required by the housing authority.

For a subset of the unhoused, yes. Some chronically unhoused people don't have the skills to function in housing, some chronically unhoused people have mental illnesses that make staying in housing difficult for them and the people around them. A small subset unhoused people want to live on the street. Homes without social services and a safety net is setting up the broad unhoused population up for failure, and then we wonder why housing programs don't work and throw money at something else.

Homelessness is an incredibly complicated issue. Mental healthcare is not the answer, medical care is not the answer, financial support is not the answer, housing is not the answer. Some combination of those things in the right proportion is the answer, and it's not one size fits all.

Imagine. Somebody's homeless, you give them a home? Where they have an address, can wash up, cook meals, get enough sleep, are safer? It's that simple?

(and they now have something to lose, providing incentive to avoid petty crime)

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