Edit: Just to be clear, I'm very pro-immigration. I just think that studying rich homogeneous societies doesn't result in many useful takeaways for countries like the USA.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Finland#:~:tex....
While homogeneity may play a factor I think it's dwarved by other things. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Romania
https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/finland/romania
In my central European country with high ethnic homogenity the unhoused are also stemming from majority population. There is a Roma minority who are often struggling with poverty but are rarely unhoused.
Correct.
"There was no significant difference in rates of lifetime adult homelessness between foreign-born adults and native-born adults (1.0% vs 1.7%). Foreign-born participants were less likely to have various mental and substance-use disorders, less likely to receive welfare, and less likely to have any lifetime incarceration." ("The foreign-born population was 46.2 million (13.9% of the total population)" in 2022 [2].)
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30739834/
[2] https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2024/foreign-...
citation needed
That said, the evidence is mixed [1], with fairness and economic inequality [2][3] seeming to matter more than racial homogeneity. (Lots of tiny, racially-homogenous societies–high trust or not–bordering each other also have a one-way historical track record.)
[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/000169931772161...
When someone raised in a culture where cheating to win by any means is acceptable (most of India) or where bartering, persuading and microfrauding in trade (most of Middle east and sup-sahara Africa) is not frowned upon, it is not a stretch to imagine that the introduction of such cultural elements will lead to dilution of the overall interpersonal trust in let's say, Swedish society.
If you had actually read the paper (which I have), you would realise that the relationship between ethnic diversity and social trust is inverse.
Meh. They've got two different official languages. It's not as ethnically uniform as a lot of other European countries.
I just don't think Finland is a great example of what the post was talking about (a mythic country where everything works because it is an "ethnically homogenous high trust society" - although on reflection I'm not even sure what that all means). It's a way of lazily discounting what their government might or might not be achieving regarding homelessness, and it's not even true.
I'm not any sort of expert on Finland, but they have had some real political and social divides over the years and (I think?) nevertheless manage to care about the effectiveness of their welfare state. They'd appear to be a counterexample to the notion that everybody in a country needs to be the same in order for this stuff to work.